


The Good Child

by dragoneyes



Series: The Good Child [1]
Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Benevolent Stalking, Character Study, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 15:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18210368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoneyes/pseuds/dragoneyes
Summary: If Kaito heard Hakuba say one more time that he was perfectly fine, he wasn't sure he would be able to resist the urge to clock him on the head, just to give him an excuse to finally admit that he was not, in fact, fine.





	The Good Child

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was completely unplanned!  
> You can all blame the HakuKai discord for this!  
> We all enable one another in there. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> As per my usual, spoilery trigger warnings are in the end notes.

  
"Bakaito do your job properly! Aoko can see you fake-cleaning the classroom from here!"

Kaito watched his childhood friend storm her way towards him, and he sidestepped just enough to keep a desk between the two of them: she wasn't annoyed enough to go after him, he could recognize that easily. Her moods were as familiar to him as his own, and the lack of actual shouting was a pretty indicative sign of the fact that she was still a good distance away from being set off into a chase.

"Why should I? You're good enough with a mop for the both of us, right?" he teasingly retorted, leaning against the broom handle he was currently holding on and making a great scene of closing his eyes.

"I'm tired, I think I'll take a nap instead."

It earned him a frustrated sound - he loved when Aoko did that, she was great for bickering.

Besides, Kaito didn't feel in a particularly cooperative mood at the moment in any case, not only because the heist from last night was drawn out to the early hours in the morning because a certain meddling teen detective just  _ had _ to set up more traps than usual against him, but also because the same meddling detective was also currently stuck on afterschool clean-up duty with him, Aoko, and Keiko. It resulted in both Kaito being reminded of his current sleep-deprived state, and in him losing any kind of will to do anything other than go home and pass out on his bed every time that he as much as glanced at the guy.

"You wouldn't be tired if you didn't pass the whole night watching that thief of yours on the TV!"

He opened his eyes again with an exaggerated gasp at Aoko's words, focusing his attention back on his childhood friend. "And miss on KID-sama's performance? Absolutely not!"

This kind of back and forth was an almost practiced routine between the two of them, and it never failed to raise his spirit when he was in a bad mood.

"You shouldn't be cheering for that thief at all!" Aoko was moving closer again, and Kaito was quick to keep the distance between them unaltered, sending a wide grin in her direction.

"I don't see why not! He's a great magician!"

"He's a thief! A criminal!" Aoko's eyes were ablaze with rightful fury now, and she raised her mop to point it menacingly in his direction. "You should cheer for Aoko's father and Hakuba-kun instead!"

"Why would I ever do that?" the dark-haired boy replied, sticking his tongue out in her direction while he put a few more desks in her path, "KID-sama is great at what he does, while Hakuba can't even do his job properly!"

Out of the corner of his eyes, Kaito saw the teen detective freeze at his words, and the grin on his face became more wicked, spurred on by the potential for more mischief - he  _ did _ still need to make the guy pay for last night's traps after all!

"Bakaito! You can't say that!" Aoko's shout was outraged and, uh-oh! The mop was finally raised above her head! Kaito tensed, ready to jump away in case she surrendered to the instinct of attacking.

"What? I'm saying the truth!" he chirped, and then dodged when her weapon of choice came down for him. He jumped on a nearby desk, making his way through the class by jumping to the next one, and so on, and so on, until he landed once again with his feet on the floor, just a meter away from their detective classmate.

Without losing a beat, he said his following taunt with a grin still stretching his lips.

"KID-sama is just plain better than him! That's why Hakuba fails and fails and  _ fails  _ every time he tries to catch him!"

"Bakaito!" Aoko shout again in warning, but he didn't give her any mind because, as soon as those words left his mouth, he saw one of Hakuba's hands dart out to clutch at the edge of the desk next to him, his jaw clenching and his whole body going taut with tenseness.

Oh! Did Kaito manage to hit a nerve?

How unusual!

The detective never reacted like that, and the teen magician absolutely needed to see if he would be able to provoke him into an actual fight.

  
(The guy always acted so superior about everything, that having a few fisticuffs between classmates would do him some good for sure!)

  
"...Hakuba? What? Did I offend you?" Kaito smirked trying to see if he would be able to make the detective actually snap back at him, but again, there was no verbal reaction.

In fact, there was no reaction at all: Hakuba just stood there, hand still clutching the edge of the desk, and head still tilted downwards, his fringe covering his eyes and making it impossible to see his expression properly.

He gave no sign that he had even heard his taunt.

_ Something's wrong_.

Immediately any kind of vengenceful playfulness that Kaito might be feeling was swept away and replaced with the kind of high-level alert that usually came at heists when his plans went sideways in a terrible way. He took a few steps in his classmate's direction to take a better look at his face, only to realize that the other teen was shivering from head to toe: it was a slight tremor, not enough to be seen at a distance, but that had taken over his whole body.

"Hakuba?" the magician called again, and still he received no answer.

  
(His breathing was all wrong.

It was rasping so much - it was so obvious now that Kaito was closer - it sounded like he was having trouble taking breaths in properly.

Should they take him to the infirmary? How serious was it? Should they call an ambulance?

Kaito couldn't stand the guy, but he didn't want to see him severely harmed either.)

  
"Ohi..." he tried to catch his attention for a third time, and raised his hand with the intention of seeing if touching him on a shoulder would yield any result, only to blink in surprise when his forearm was wrapped in a gentle but firm grip. When he glanced to the side, at whoever interrupted him, he found that Keiko - Keiko of all people! - had stepped in to push her way between the two of them.

She wasn't giving Kaito any mind at all, and, as soon as she let him go, she focused all of her attention on their blonde classmate instead.

"Hakuba-kun? Can you hear me?" she sounded worried, but not overtly so, it was more of an undertone in her voice that she seemed to be trying very hard to keep in check in order to avoid further exacerbating the situation.

For just a moment, Kaito saw Hakuba's gaze flick in her direction, but it went back to the ground right after that, and the teen detective didn't show any other reaction at her inquire.

"What is going on?" it was Aoko this time that spoke, sounding agitated and concerned while her eyes kept darting back and forth between the three of them. "Is something wrong with Hakuba-kun?"

Kaito would really like to have an answer to that one as well.

"No, I think it's..." Keiko she began to reply, only to interrupt herself with a frown. All of her focus was still on Hakuba, her eyes never leaving his face, while she carefully studied his expression. "I've a cousin that has these sometimes when she's under a lot of stress, we just need to..." she continued, as if reaching some kind of conclusion, before turning her next query at the detective himself.

"Hakuba-kun, do you know where you are?"

_ That _ was a weird question to make and for an instant it made Kaito freeze because  _ why _ would the detective not know that?

Then, when he saw Hakuba shift his head a bit in her direction, it hit him that maybe this wasn't about awareness at all: it was a way to focus his attention away from whatever was keeping him frozen like that. It took still a few long moments before their classmate managed to scrounge up enough breath to answer.

"...school."

With a sound of both approval and encouragement, Keiko continued her inquire. "How is our school called?"

Again it took a bit of time for Hakuba to gather himself in order to answer properly, but he managed to do it with a bit more certainty than before. "...Ekoda High School."

"What day is today?"

"...6th of September...Friday."

Before he could even process what he was doing, his instincts automatically taking the lead when faced with an emergency, and his mind spurred on by a jolt of inspiration, Kaito joined in, ignoring the corner of his mind that pointed out with a hint of pettiness that he should let Keiko-chan handle it - that it wasn't his job to care about Hakuba.

"What time is it?"

With the kind of instinctive gesture that spoke of habit long-since cemented in one's behavior, the blonde detective reached for his pocket and pulled out his watch, fingers still trembling as they squeezed it tight before his thumb began to trace the incision on its back.

When he finally flipped it open, Hakuba shoulders  _ slumped_, the remaining tenseness in his stance leaving his body all in one clean swoop. He took a deep breathe to answer.

"It's 17:10:13.25," the taller teen murmured, eyes finally raising to peer at Kaito, gaze still confused, but definitely once again aware of his surroundings.

_ Oh. _

Was that the reason for always proclaiming aloud the whole thing down to the milliseconds? Did Hakuba already have the habit and found out it helped when  _ that _ happened to him, or was it that Hakuba had just incorporated it into his normal behavior to make it stand out less whenever it was needed?

It had always been lingering at the back of Kaito's mind, that, when the detective announced the time in such a meticulous way, it looked a bit silly - he could appreciate the showmanship of it, but it still looked a bit silly. He thought that the reason behind it was akin to the way Kaito would make KID's first appearance at a heist as flashy as possible: to give an impact and attract attention to what he was about to do.

Now, suddenly, the calming ritual was making a whole different, unpleasant sense.

"Here, Hakuba-kun, sit," Aoko had brought over a chair for the taller teen, eyes filled with worry as she offered it to him, and Hakuba pliantly and silently obeyed her request.

The detective's gaze lowered again, but the shivering seemed to subside at least somewhat. He looked even paler than usual, and the hand that wasn't clutching at his watch was now absently rubbing at his chest, just above his heart. His lips were forming words, just barely, but no sound came out of them.

Kaito had to squint to read what he was trying to say.

_ I'm sorry. _

Why?

_ I'm sorry. _

He did nothing wrong, so why?

_ I'm sorry. _

What was he even sorry for?

"What are you even sorry for?" he only realized he had said it aloud, when Hakuba's startled gaze snapped to him, eyes wider than Kaito had ever seen them, before suddenly every part of the detective went on lockdown: his expression flattened, his body stopped shivering, and the hand that had been rubbing his chest slowly lowered to find its way in his lap.

Then a familiar wide, polite smile lit his face, the kind of smile Hakuba always wore and that appeared to constantly exude an implied sense of smugness and confidence in everything that the other teen did.

It was with the kind of horrified abrupt certainty that he was about to witness a head-crash between two trains mistakenly running in opposite directions on the same rail, that Kaito, after months of sharing classes with the detective, recognized the Poker Face neatly slotting itself on Hakuba's face for what it truly was.

"I'm perfectly fine, Aoko-san, Keiko-san. There is no reason to worry," he reassured the two girls without missing a beat, and Kaito knew - he  _ knew _ \- with the kind of bone-deep certainty that one developed only after years of practice in the arts of deceptions that it was a lie.

He should say something, he should call the other boy out on it, but his mind was swarming with too many thoughts to give voice to any of them.

For starters, what kind of phantom thief was he, that he hadn't even been able to recognize a Poker Face when he saw one?

Kaito didn't know whether he should be impressed by Hakuba's skills in acting, or if he should be alarmed by the fact that he had been so thoroughly deceived so far.

  
(Maybe he should be worried instead, because how used was Hakuba to it, if he was able to just put it on with the ease of an automatic response?)

  
"Do you need anything, Hakuba-kun? Water? Anything else?" Keiko asked in the meanwhile, still taking charge in a situation she was somewhat familiar with. The detective merely smiled and shook his head, gently letting her know that he required nothing.

Hakuba appeared to be doing better - far better than he had any right to be, considering that less than a few minutes before he had been shivering and clutching the desk for dear life - but Kaito felt like his perception of things had gone  _ click _ and shifted with his epiphany, and he couldn't now stop noticing all the ways in which the detective's expression just felt  _ wrong _ somehow.

The smile on his face was wide, but it didn't reach his eyes.

His shoulders were tense, not as relaxed as they would be if one truly felt confident about the situation they were in.

His left hand had gone back to his pocket to put his watch back in its proper place, but it was still lingering to trace the incisions on the back in an unconscious self-soothing gesture.

It was beginning to unnerve him, because he could feel it in every gesture Hakuba made, that the detective was going against one simple rule that had been thoroughly drilled into Kaito's head since he was little: Poker Face wasn't meant to be kept on at all time.

It was supposed to be used only when needed, when it was necessary to deflect an audience's attention before a trick, to keep them guessing about what was about to happen, not to shut one's feelings down. It messed up your head if you did otherwise - Kaito had tried after his father died, but it had taken all of one day for his mother to catch on that dangerous behavior in her son, and to properly set him straight in that regard.

She told him, "If you need to cry, you cry. If you need to scream, you scream. There is no-one you need to hide those feelings from in this house. I feel the same way." and so he had cried, and cried, and cried until he had fallen asleep in her arms.

Poker Face was meant to be used like a prop on a stage, that was all that it was.

Did Hakuba ever take his own down? Because Kaito couldn't remember one single instance in which the detective hadn't been his usual smug and insufferable self.

He watched with a frown as the detective kept assuring Aoko and Keiko that he was all right now, that it wasn't a common occurrence, and therefore they shouldn't be worrying themselves about it, he hadn't been sleeping well in the last week, that was all.

  
(Kaito's heist was only last night, it wouldn't warrant going a whole week with patchy sleep...

What exactly had the detective been doing?)

  
_ So it did happen before_, his mind noticed in the meantime,  _ how many times? Was there someone else with Hakuba last time? Was he alone? _

  
(What did you do if you were alone and something like that happened to you? Did you just wait for it to pass?)

  
"You should go home," he pointed out, only to be met by a pair of maroon eyes glancing at him with honest confusion.

"I'm perfectly fine," Hakuba reiterated, as if he thought that Kaito needed to hear it as well, "I still need to help you finish here..."

What?

Who would care about clean-up after they experienced something like that?

What...was going on here? This whole behavior was unsettling somehow...

The teen magician couldn't quite put his finger on what was making him so tense, but the whole situation pinged his instincts in the same way walking on unsteady beams in the ceiling, not knowing when - or even if - they were going to crash would.

This was not...it was not just an issue with putting on a Poker Face at all times. Granted, Hakuba certainly did that, and he was certainly using it to keep his emotions hidden - suppressed? Kaito wasn't sure - but these continuous attempts at derailing any kind of worry away from himself seemed so deeply ingrained in the detective, that he did it automatically and without question.

There must be something else going on, but Kaito had no idea  _ what _ he was looking for.

Staring at Hakuba certainly wasn't helping, and the other teen had turned his attention back on Aoko when - prompted by what the magician had said - she tried to insist as well that he should go back home and rest, especially if he was having trouble sleeping. The detective seemed to hesitate, taking a moment to consider Aoko's stubborn expression, before opening his mouth to give a polite reply.

"All right. It wasn't my intention to upset you. If it'll ease your worries, I'll go home."

And again, the option that created the least amount of disturbance was taken.

Was he just embarrassed by the whole episode?

Was Kaito reading too much into this?

  
(Did Hakuba think that no-one  _ should _ care?)

  
It felt as if he were trying to make as little a scene as possible, but the guy was a detective - a teen detective, for fuck's sake, with all the drama and showmanship that came with it - he shouldn't be unused to be at the center of attention like this.

This made no sense whatsoever.

  
(Did Hakuba just loathe showing his weakness?)

  
Kaito needed...

_ Kaito needed to know what was up. _

  
(Was this how detectives felt?

This sensation of staring at an abyss and wanting to know if there was a bottom?

This was kind of horrible and disquieting, he was glad he wasn't a detective.)

  
He watched with attentive eyes as his classmate gathered his things and gave a quick goodbye before making his way out of the room, his gaze still lingering on the way Hakuba's shoulders looked still tense even from behind, and Kaito began to consider what he should do next.

  
******

  
It was the next day by the time Kaito decide on a course of action to follow. He had tried to get the whole episode out of his head, but the more he attempted to avoid thinking about it, the more his mind seemed eager to replay in great details all the things that were wrong about Hakuba's behavior the day before.

So, if for nothing other than to regain some sanity and some ability to sleep at night, Kaito decided to don his costume and do a little reconnaissance in the Hakuba property, fully expecting not to find anything exciting at all.

  
(Maybe if he showed his traitorous brain that being a detective sucked, it would stop insisting to investigate the matter.)

  
It was late Saturday afternoon, and the teen detective appeared to have gone out for now, leaving the house - and his room in particular - empty for the thief magician to do as he pleased. It didn't take much effort for him to enter through one of the first floor windows - in fact, he was a bit surprised by the lack of security, considering the family that lived there - and it took even less to find where Hakuba's room was.

As soon as he stepped inside, he was hit by the realization that he had never been there before. In all the eight months he had known the guy, not once he considered gathering information on him in that way. If he had, maybe he would have been less surprised when, upon entering the room, he found that it was far less outlandish than he had imagined it to be: it was quite sizeable for sure, and the bed looked large and comfortable - enough to stretch out even with those beanpoles of legs that the detective had - but there wasn't anything particularly valuable around that the thief could see.

In fact, the whole room seemed to be furnished with a practical mentality more than anything fancy: a desk, a wardrobe, and an - admittedly pretty impressive - bookcase were the main features around. Somehow, Kaito felt a bit cheated that his mental image of how the detective lived his everyday life wasn't exactly following his expectations so far.

There was a pile on the desk, about half a meter tall, of what looked like very confidential, potentially very important case files - Kaito would have to take a peek just in case, if he had the time - right next to an empty mug of former tea, a book that he was fairly certain was about stab wounds, and a few sheets of paper that looked as if they'd been half used to write notes on and then had just been left there to wait for Hakuba's return.

On the bed laid pair pants and a shirt, both of which giving the impression of having been thrown there at some point and promptly forgotten - his internal KID gave just a tiny shriek of horror at the realization of how many creases those would get if left there - and, upon further inspection a laptop was buried under them.

It had stickers on it.

One of them was right next to the mousepad and featured a cartoonish version of a dejected KID in handcuffs.

Kaito would have felt outraged by it, if it weren't drawn so well.

Overall the room looked very much like it was being lived in by a teenage boy, and Kaito had no idea why his brain seemed to be having so much trouble at that realization, because the detective was his classmate after all: they were the same age!

He moved towards the bookcase to give a cursory look at what it contained, to find that it seemed to be following some kind of ordering algorithm that only Hakuba could discern. There were more books about subjects that might be useful for a detective to be knowledgeable about - he saw something on forensics and something on criminal psychology - on the two bottom shelves, and some mysteries and, unexpectedly, a few western fantasies on the top one - why anyone would put leisure reads so far out of reach instead than on a more accessible level, Kaito had no idea.

The middle area of the bookcase was...difficult to describe: it ranged from one book that he was fairly certain was university-level neurobiology, three different books on chemistry, and one single very thick book on birds of prey.

He was about to chuck the whole thing as a waste of time, when he noticed, tucked between one of the chemistry books and the side of the bookcase, five small notebooks all pressed together as if to fill as little space as possible.

They all had the same dark grey cover, and they all looked pretty old - the spines were worn out and gave the impression of having been handled many times before. They didn't look like the kind of notebooks that he'd seen Hakuba jot notes on sometimes at heists - those were smaller - but rather, the more he looked at them, the more they reminded Kaito of what a grade schooler would use to write homeworks on.

They were so out of place, nested among university-level book on science, that they made him pause.

Maybe Hakuba used them to write annotations when working on cases that didn't involve KID? Judging by the pile on his desk, he certainly didn't seem to be short on those.

Without thinking about it too much, he reached out to take the rightmost one from its place, flipping open the cover.

Then he paused and frowned, lips pursing in confusion while his eyes quickly took in the content of the first page: it didn't contain anything pertaining to any case, in fact, the handwriting was clearly the uncertain one of a child that couldn't be more than six or seven years old. It didn't look like writing exercises, but rather like some kind of list.

Curiosity sparked, he took a better look and begin to read.

  * _A good child does not cry._


  * _A good child is not loud._



What were these? A set of rules? They sounded like a set of rules...

  * _A good child is polite._


  * _A good child is obedient._



They were a bit like the kind of parental directions you would give to a growing child. Simple directions to teach them proper behavior when they still hadn't developed one of their own.

Why would Hakuba keep something like this in his room?

  * _A good child does not laugh, they only smile._



Uh?

That...didn't sound right...

Did Kaito ever hear Hakuba laugh before?

He was sure the other had chuckled and smirked at him in more than one occasion, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall one single episode in which the detective had let out the kind of laughter that lit your face and shook your whole body with mirth.

  * _A good child follows their elder's orders._



Why were these rules written down anyways? Normally you would just correct a kid verbally if something they did was wrong or dangerous...was there really a need for all this?

There was a distinct feeling of wrongness to the whole thing that made the hair at the back of his neck raise with dread. Instinctively he took a quick look at the rest of the room, making sure that he was alone in spite of the unsettling feeling that he was being watched and judged somehow.

  * _A good child needs no friends._



Ohi...

  * _A good child needs no distractions._



_ OHI! _

  * _A good child strives for perfection._



Kaito's stomach clenched, his eyes growing wider as he kept reading down the list. There was a hint of nausea creeping at the back of his throat, his instincts set on high alert by how disquieting the situation was, and a corner of his mind chanting a distressed never-ending loop of  _ this is not how you grow a child! _

What was going on here?!

  * _A good child never fails._



  
( _"What? I'm saying the truth! KID-sama is just plain better than him! That's why Hakuba fails and fails and _ fails _ every time he tries to catch him!"_)

  
Kaito was going to throw up.

Hakuba!

Shit,  _ Hakuba! _

Hakuba, with eyes wide and breath uneven.

Hakuba, clenching the edge of a desk, knuckles white because of how hard he was holding on.

Hakuba, shivering without control, gaze glassy and unfocused, and using all of his strength to answer even the most basic of questions.

Hakuba, silently mouthing "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again as if some kind of deeply ingrained survival instinct had kicked in when he thought he had failed at something.

Kaito could feel the taste of bile on his tongue, and he had to close his eyes to force himself to swallow it back down.

  * _A good child is confident._


  * _A good child is better than their peers._



That was not how it worked!

  * _A good child takes care of themselves on their own._



A child was supposed to be taken care of by their parents!

  * _A good child never asks for help._



One time, Kaito suddenly remembered, there was this one time at a heist just two months before in which Kaito-as-KID had handcuffed the detective to a pipe in the basement of the building where the target gem was held. The place had been cold in spite of the fact that it was mid-July, but the detective wasn't supposed to stay there for long in any case, just enough for Kaito to make his exit from the roof without interference.

If the detective had called out for help, someone from Task Force left there on guard would have heard it for sure - Kaito had made sure they were close enough for that.

Hakuba never called for help.

He remained there, and he silently waited in the dim light without as much as making a sound to catch someone's attention to his predicament. It took a hour and half for someone to realize that he hadn't been seen in a while.

By the time he was finally dragged out of the place and was offered drinks to warm up, he had been as pale as a ghost and shivering from head to toe from the cold.

And still he hadn't protested.

  
(And still he hadn't asked for help.)

  
Kaito only found out because the following day, at dinner, Nakamori-keibu had quite a few choice words to say about KID on the matter. The thief thought it had been a fluke - those happened sometimes when he tried something new - and he switched to only handcuffing people when someone else was nearby to get them free.

This - this whole situation - he didn't think it was something like  _ this  _ at all.

Kaito stared at the notebook in his hands and wondered what sort of person would give these kind of teachings to a child.

Peering down at the careful, overly exaggerated strokes of the hiragana that made the young age of the writer impossible to mistake, he slowly flipped to the next page, only to find the same list written down once again.

He flipped another and there it was a third, a fourth, and a fifth time. Over, and, over, and over, until he reached the end of the notebook and a hundred pages had gone by filled with the same list of rules written down in the same childish handwriting.

He stared at the other four notebooks still waiting on the shelf, and with clenched teeth he put the one in his hand back in its place, switching it out for the third in the line.

There it was again the damn list.

Again, and again, and again, until that one was filled as well.

He reached for the fifth notebook with a feeling of gladness that whoever had forced Hakuba to write all this was not nearby, because Kaito was not sure he would be able to keep up with his own rules about not harming people otherwise.

The last ten pages or so were blank - small mercy there - and the only thing that Kaito was able to think was, "Thanks fuck, he was able to get away from them."

He stared at the last list written down, black ink staring mockingly back up at him, and all that he wanted to do was to set every single one of those notebooks on fire.

"To what do I owe your presence here, KID-san?"

When he glanced up at the sound of a familiar voice, he was met by the Poker Face Smile again. Upon resting his eyes on it, Kaito wanted to rip it off of the detective's face and shout at him to  _ stop_, because you were not supposed to keep smiling like a good child if something was upsetting you. You were supposed to scream, and cry, and let it all out - it had been like that for him after his father died! - and then once you got yourself ridden of all the pain, you went back to smiling from happiness instead.

But he wasn't Kaito at the moment, he was KID, and KID would not say aloud all the things that Kaito wanted to.

No.

KID worked with preliminary scouting, careful planning, and several back-up plans to fall back to in case of unexpected obstacles.

He needed to regroup and  _ think_.

Because there was no way he would let Tantei-san to his own devices after this - the detective obviously needed someone else to keep track of his well-being - but he was sure that if he offered it outright, his help would be rejected.

  
(It was right there in the last two rules, after all.)

  
"I was told by a blackbird that you felt a bit unwell today, Tantei-san."

"And you thought the best course of action would be to visit when I wasn't home and take advantage of the situation to snoop around?" Hakuba pointed out, his face betraying nothing but amusement.

"I was merely waiting for your return," the thief hummed, watching as the detective's eyes fell on the notebook still resting in his hands. There was no anger when the other took in the sight, he merely stepped closer and slowly plucked the cause of Kaito's inner struggle from his fingers, putting it back in its proper shelf.

He made no sign to try and catch him, not even with KID standing just next to him, but the smile on his face seemed to flatten just of a fraction.

"As you can see, I'm perfectly fine..."

_ No, you aren't_, Kaito wanted to bite back, but didn't.

"...but since you seem to be having a bit of difficulty there," The Smile was back, this time in the form of that hateful smug smirk that he always wore, "I will clarify for you: those notebooks you were so engrossed by are the way one of my aunts promotes good behavior in children in her household. Since it is her opinion that children won't retain well rules set by adults, unless they're periodically reminded to them, this is the way she devised to overcome this particular obstacle when growing a child of her own."

He paused, a look of consideration briefly making an appearance on his face before he continued. The detective looked as if he were trying to find the right words to assure him that there was nothing to worry about.

  
(There was a lot to worry about, no matter how blasé Tantei-san acted about it.)

  
"When I was about seven, for a while I was left in her care - my mother had her work in England and couldn't move here, and my father, as you undoubtedly know, is a very busy man," Hakuba continued, voice still carefully polite and betraying nothing of what was passing through his mind.

"Since, as I mentioned, she has a son about my age, my father thought it would be a good idea to let us spend time together after school," he explained, and then gestured at the five notebooks innocently resting in the bookcase. "What you saw there is nothing different than what she did with Akira-kun. She is a very strict woman, you see."

No, Kaito didn't see it. He didn't see it at all, because he knew what a stubborn Hakuba could do - how it tended to end up with KID having to pull out several backup plans in a row to avoid getting caught - and his words sounded a whole lot like the kind of resignation he didn't know that the detective could even feel.

"What I would like to know, Tantei-san, is why you still keep them," his query came out in a light tone, but his gaze never veered away from Hakuba's face. The detective frowned, a look of honest confusion filling his eyes.

"They're childhood memories, I suppose."

Childhood memories?

Kaito eyed the dark-colored spines quietly peeking back at him from their snug place between the side of the bookshelf and the thick book on chemistry resting next to them.

Weren't they more like a reminder?

A silent threat to warn him off of letting himself slip up even for an instant?

When he peered back at the other teenager, The Smile was back in full force, all detached politeness and silent waiting, and Kaito realized that further addressing that issue would yield no results, so he let it go for now.

"Aren't you going to try to catch me, Tantei-san?" he asked instead, "I did trespass in your property after all."

Again Hakuba looked confused, brows furrowing just slightly while he tried to make the thief's intentions out. It occurred to Kaito that he had seen that expression before, except it had not been directed at him, but rather at Aoko the one time that she had tried to convince the detective to hang-out with the two of them after school.

It was a barely-contained mix of bewilderment and suspicion, as if the mere act of being posed that query stumped him somehow.

"We're not at a heist," was Hakuba's answer, stated matter-of-factly, with no sign of doubt in his words.

Uh.

Since when had it been like that?

Because Kaito still remembered the time he was accused of being KID, and Hakuba certainly had been quite insistent in his convictions.

He searched the detective's face for some kind of explanation to this new unprecedented behavior, only to find himself stared back in return. There was a form of passivity to his classmate's stance that was beginning to unsettle him at an almost physical level, making his skin crawl with anticipation.

Was this the lingering effects of the previous day's episode?

"So, what if I came again to check on your health at a later date?" he asked, now curious to know the answer.

"I don't understand why you would, seeing as - as I've already told you - I'm perfectly fine," Hakuba tilted his head, considering, "but if it helps assuage whatever worry you might still have, you have my word that I won't try to catch you as long as your only misbehavior is trespassing."

Uuuh...

Kaito was beginning to feel a bit like he entered some kind of alternate reality without realizing it.

"I know you don't like people being harmed," the other added, "if it is for your peace of mind, I've no objection to you coming and going as you please."

Well, if Hakuba put it like that, Kaito certainly wasn't going to protest, so he limited himself to tip his hat in sign of appreciation.

"Now, if you're quite done with your fussing," the detective continued, familiar smug grin once more twisting his mouth, "I've still some cases left to work through."

Pursing his lips at the dismissal, KID huffed an automatic reply, "You're making worrying about you very difficult, Tantei-san."

The grin on the other teen's face only grew smugger.

"Fussy," he repeated as he walked back towards his desk.

Watching his back retreat, Kaito realized that there would be no further gain from hanging around - not with Hakuba so enveloped in his own brand of Poker Face - so he made his way to the open window, perching himself on the sill before calling out his farewell.

"I'll see you again next time, Tantei-san."

It took a few long moments before a reply came. It was a quiet, absent hum of acknowledgement that made the magician pause before taking off.

When he sent a last, quick glance back in the room, no expression rested on Hakuba's face anymore. 

No smirk, no sneer, no irritation, no amusement, not even The Smile.

Something in Kaito's chest gave a painful squeeze at the sight, but he clenched his teeth against the instinct to stay, and instead jumped out of the window before he did something he would regret later on.

It was time to plan.

  
******

  
It was common knowledge among good phantom thieves, that a plan could only be as good as the preliminary scouting was. Being the best at what he did, KID could not exempt himself from properly gathering information, before deciding on a course of action.

Which was how, on the next day, he ended up wrapped in one of his plainest shirts, a pair of jeans, and his usual black cap, and bringing along four doves, two microphones, two cameras, and a fully-charged phone to keep track of Tantei-san's movement while he kept himself conveniently out of sight.

It was early afternoon - because there was no way that even his worry would convince him to wake up early on a Sunday - when he found himself a nice spot in a secondary alley just outside the Hakuba property and he sent off two of his feathered little spies to do their job.

The video feedback wasn't exactly great, but he knew better than to surrender to the temptation of keeping a closer, more personal eye on the detective: the guy was tricky, and Kaito really wasn't up to having to explain why he was following him around.

From what he could tell, Hakuba had passed the morning in his room - alone? There didn't seem to be anyone else in the house - but at around three in the afternoon he finally stepped outside, startling the teen magician for a moment: he was wearing a pair of comfortable pants, a pretty normal t-shirt, and a messenger bag hanging from his shoulder.

This was possibly the first time that Kaito had ever seen him wearing anything casual, and it suddenly occurred to him, that he had no memory of ever interacting with him outside of school and KID-related activities.

  
(He had his good reasons - the guy was both unbearable to be around and a constant danger - but maybe he should have considered at least a few attempts at interacting with him to gather information in those weeks before Hakuba came to the correct conclusion regarding his nightly endeavors.)

  
When Hakuba took off down the road, Kaito followed, making sure to keep himself out of sight: his doves were well-trained enough that they would know both how close they should be to their target for the teen magician to be able to see and hear properly, and how to avoid being spotted in return.

During the leisured pace that the detective set for himself, Kaito noticed a few things: every time someone crossed his path, Hakuba would at the very least give a nod of greetings; although it seemed as if he were focused on where he was going, a few times he appeared to realize too late that he had taken a wrong turn and he had to retrace his steps; one time he noticed a calico cat on a garden wall and tried to pet it; the cat was not impressed and fled without making a sound; instead of leaving the cat be, Hakuba trailed after it for a few minutes; he only gave up when the feline ran inside a private property and there was no way of following it that wouldn't imply some unlawful actions on his part.

It was the most teenager Kaito had ever seen the detective behave, and it left him a bit puzzled because why would Hakuba not act like that at school as well?

When someone - anyone - was around, he seemed to switch to some kind of high-alert state in which he was hyper-aware of every single gesture he made. It would have looked like paranoia if any fear were involved, but the detective didn't show any sign of distress: it just seemed to be his automatic response to socialization.

It took another twenty minutes before the detective's attention was caught once again, this time by something in a side alley. At the beginning Kaito wasn't able to tell by what he had been distracted, but, once his doves resettled themselves in a more ideal position, he saw a little girl of about ten, with her dark hair fastened in a messy ponytail and wearing a bright green dress. She had been crying, because she was now quickly rubbing her eyes as if to wipe tears away.

"Hello," Hakuba called out, his voice polite and unthreatening. "Are you alright? Do you need help?"

He was making sure to stay at a distance from her, Kaito noticed, keeping himself on one side of the alley to avoid making her feel like he was trying to cut her off from the main street. As far as he could tell, Hakuba looked completely comfortable with the situation, as if finding a child crying alone was perfectly normal.

"Are you lost?" he asked again, voice still quietly friendly in an attempt at soothing her worry. She didn't look very convinced in spite of his attempts, and she sniffled before finally speaking her mind.

"Oka-chan says I shouldn't talk to weird people..."

"That's a wise advice," the detective concurred, still unperturbed by her suspicion. "Do I seem weird to you?"

The girl stared at him long and hard. She had stopped crying, now distracted by the newcomer, but she still looked very much uncertain when she finally replied with all the candidness that only children were able to show.

"You look weird."

Kaito instinctively winced at that one: it was true that the detective's eyes could be a bit unsettling between the staring and the slight red tinge that they assumed at times, but the teen magician didn't think they were  _ that _ bizarre.

On second thought maybe she was talking about the European heritage - she was a child, she couldn't possibly have seen many foreigners before - and somehow, that idea appealed to him even less.

  
(If that was the immediate reaction that his classmate got, it was a bit of a pity, because Kaito had always thought that - personality issues aside - Hakuba was objectively handsome. It was one of the reasons why he annoyed him so much.)

  
The teen detective didn't seem to notice anything wrong with her comment.

"If it's alright with you, I would like to accompany you to the closest  _ koban_," he offered, taking a step back into the main street to give her more space.

"I shouldn't follow..." she frowned, eyeing the new opening that had been given to her.

"I promise to keep at least a meter distance between us at all times," Hakuba offered, giving her a few more steps to move. "If you see me too close for your comfort, you may run."

It took still a few moments of silent deliberation before the girl nodded and made her way out of the back alley, the teen detective keeping his promise and leaving her a wide berth to move.

"Uhm...ok then," she finally allowed, puffing her chest out to show that she had no fear for this stranger now that she had calmed down. Hakuba looked amused - Kaito kind of agreed with the sentiment, because she was kind of adorable - but he neither commented on her behavior, nor he pointed out that just a few minutes before she had been crying her eyes out. Instead, he took off at a slow pace to make sure not to lose her from his sight.

"I'm Makiko, by the way. It's written with the kanji for 'true'...hum...'joy' and 'child'," the little girl spoke again after a while, seemingly reassured by the fact that Hakuba was keeping his word.

"Oka-chan says you should introduce yourself when you meet someone new," she added more sternly, sending the detective a disapproving frown for not having done so himself already.

Kaito wasn't sure, because his camera dove chose that moment to fly a bit further up the road, but he had the impression that he saw Hakuba's shoulders trembled with suppressed amusement for an instant.

"You're perfectly right, that was an oversight on my part," he sounded absolutely serious when he replied, "I'm Saguru, written with the kanji for 'to search'."

"That's a weird name."

It was. Who called their son like that? Were Hakuba's parents trying to make a detective out of him from the crib?

At least Kaito's dad had the decency of giving him a name that both sounded normal and had different kanji from anything related to his profession - or being a phantom thief would have been a whole lot more awkward  _ and _ difficult.

"My understanding is that my parents had some trouble having me," Hakuba explained, not at all perturbed by being deemed "weird" once more.

"Ah!" Makiko-chan brightened up at his words, as if finally coming to the solution to a great mystery. A smile was splitting her face wide and happy - the first one she had shown since the detective found her - when she offered her deduction.

" _They_ were searching for  _ you_."

Oh.

That...that sounded kind of nice.

Kaito had been wondering what kind of people Hakuba's parents were: the only thing he knew for sure was that they both seemed to be rarely around. He knew that Hakuba's father was the Superintendent General of the police, but even asking Nakamori-keibu about the guy hadn't brought any interesting information about him. His knowledge on Hakuba's mother was even worse, because that damned detective that was the cause for all his distress never talked about his private life at all - granted, that might be because Kaito tried to actively avoid him, but even Aoko, who he was on friendly terms with, apparently had nothing to offer in that regard.

With this new knowledge about Hakuba's naming, at least the teen magician could tell that they did want him even if they weren't around much.

  
(If that were the case, did they know about the notebooks? Did they do something about it? Was that how his classmate managed to get away from that situation?)

  
"Oh, there is a dove!"

Kaito brought his attention back on the videofeed in time to see Makiko squinting back at him. She was too far away to properly see the camera, but his birds were well-trained, and he waited patiently as the bird she had spotted took flight and resettled itself out of sight.

"Ah! It flew away!"

It took a few moments before the video came back in focus to find that Makiko-chan had braved a few steps closer to Hakuba in order to chat more comfortably. The detective,as per their agreement, didn't make any move to reach out for her, not even to prompt her in the right direction.

"I like doves, they're pretty!" she grinned up at him, filled with the sudden excitement that only children were capable of. Hakuba watched her with an expression Kaito couldn't quite read, it looked like amusement, but the lack of smugness seemed to make it difficult for his mind to process it properly.

"I like birds of prey," the detective offered in return, adding when he saw the confused look on her face. "Hawks for the most part."

"Hawks are cool," Makiko-chan concurred, her expression brightening up again at the clarification. "But I like doves better."

"I have a classmate that keeps and trains doves," Hakuba hummed in return, and there it was, that familiar smug smile bending just a corner of his mouth. Kaito felt a bit like he should protest those claims, because  _ he _ had never shown his doves to the detective before, only KID had during his heists.

"Ooohh! Does he keep hawks too?" the little girl asked with so much glee that it made the teen magician shudder: why would anyone want to keep one of those murder machines?

The smug smile on Hakuba's face softened a bit at her excited questioning.

"No," he patiently explained, "Even if he wanted to - which I don't think he does - with his doves living in the same space, it wouldn't be ideal."

Makiko-chan seemed to consider this new piece of information, her young face scrunching up in consideration before she asked more carefully, "If I ask Oka-chan do you think she'll let me keep doves?"

Doves were good pets, or at least so Kaito believed. They were gregarious by nature and got along with people well if properly socialized. They might be a bit more work than cats or dogs, but the teen magician thought they were worth the effort.

"Maybe," Hakuba answered in the meantime. "There is no fault in asking."

They both fell quiet after that, Makiko-chan getting distracted by her surroundings, and Kaito's classmate keeping a close eye on her to avoid losing track of her whereabouts.

The teen magician took advantage of it to reposition himself a few streets ahead: he knew where the  _ koban _ they were going to was, and that was the only way they could pass by to get there.

"Hey, onii-chan," it was again Makiko-chan who interrupted the silence, head turning once again to the half-British detective. "Do  _ you _ have a hawk?"

A shudder ran down Kaito's spine at the mere idea, imagining what would happen during his hang glider escapes if Hakuba were provided of a personal flying featherball of murderous intents.

"I would like to, but I don't have the time to take care of one properly."

_ Thanks for small mercies_, Kaito's survival instincts sighed in relief.

"Why not?" Makiko-chan asked in the meantime, and really, she should just change that line of questioning, or the detective might begin to plan ways to actually get himself one.

"Hawks are a lot of work to keep," Hakuba explained, tone still patient, as if he didn't mind to indulge a child's curiosity at all. "Much more than doves."

"Like what?"

_ More flight time, more space for just one bird, higher cost in food, higher cost in equipment_, Kaito's brain automatically supplied, but Hakuba only partially followed his thoughts, breaking down the issue in simpler terms that a girl Makiko-chan's age could better understand instead.

"You would have to take it flying every day."

"Can't it just stay at home with you?" she inquired, eyes peering at him with curiosity.

"No, hawks need exercise," Hakuba gently let her know, he really didn't seem to run out of his willingness to spread knowledge on a subject that not many were invested in. "They're less pet and more wild animals."

Pursing her lips, Makiko-chan looked again as if she were taking into great consideration this new piece of information, before she spoke again.

"I have time to take it flying, do you think Oka-chan will let me keep one if I ask?"

Kaito wondered exactly why she was so invested in this. Weren't little girls supposed to like kittens and puppies?

She had started with doves, which, while unusual, was still a pretty normal pet to own, why go all the way to hawks now?

What was going to be next?

Snakes?

"You would also have to let it hunt other animals," the detective warned her, and  _ that _ finally made her pause with a displeased frown on her face.

"Can't I just let it fly and then feed it later?"

"No," Hakuba's voice was quieter when he replied, more subdued, and Kaito almost missed it due to how softly his next words were spoken. "You should always let animals do what they naturally can do. They wouldn't be themselves anymore otherwise."

Even thought his expression didn't change, Kaito thought he sounded a bit wistful. For a moment he looked as if he were remembering something from long ago, his gaze unfocused and his expression blank.

Then all of that was gone, replaced by another patient smile, when Makiko-chan addressed him again.

"Then I'll ask Oka-chan about the doves."

  
  


It took still a few minutes or so to get to the  _ koban_.

As soon as Kaito hid on a tree nearby, he noticed the long-haired woman agitatedly talking to the police officer on duty just in front of it.

She was undoubtedly Makiko-chan's mother, because, as soon as she saw the child, she left the man standing there and immediately ran to hug her kid.

"Never do that again!" one of Kaito's doves had settled itself on a garden wall nearby, giving him a clear sound through his earbud in his ear when she worriedly addressed her daughter.

"I'm fine, Oka-chan," Makiko-chan didn't look fazed in the slightest, having by now completely calmed down thanks to Hakuba keeping her attention on birds rather than on her situation.

"The nice onii-chan took me here."

A low chuckle left the blonde detective at those words, it was a soft, quiet thing, more similar to a huff than an actual laughter. It made Kaito blink in surprise anyways because it seemed to lack the self-satisfaction that it usually held when it was turned on him.

"I thought I was weird?" he teased with amusement, only to receive a reproachful scowl by the child.

"You can be weird and be nice at the same time," Makiko-chan stated with certainty, as if she thought that  _ he _ needed to hear that between the two of them.

Whatever the detective might answer to that, it was lost when the long-haired woman finally let go of her child and stood again to properly bow at him in gratefulness.

"Thank you so much for taking care of her," she earnestly said, "I'm so sorry about this, she's usually much better at finding her way, but we recently moved in the neighborhood, and..."

"I wanted to check the stores around here so I could tell Oka-chan where everything was!" Makiko-chan interrupted with a deeper scowl that only easied when her mother turned a soft smile at her, showing no anger whatsoever for her transgression.

"Of course you did, honey, thank you for the thought," she hummed, leaning down to place a quick kiss on the child's cheek. "But the next time we move to a new place, we're gonna go explore together, alright?"

Makiko-chan immediately agreed, mollified by the show of affection. "Sure!"

_ That_, a part of Kaito thought a bit viciously,  _ is how you grow a child. _

Not whatever he had seen the day before.

"Do you plan to move again soon?" it was Hakuba's sudden query that made the teen magician turn his attention back on him. His classmate looked pensive, a finger now pressing against his chin in an expression of consideration that Kaito was well acquainted with: the blonde teen must have caught on something that he himself couldn't see, and he was now doing his detectiving thing.

  
(It looked like an automatic response. Kaito wondered if he was just curious by nature.)

  
"Ah, I don't know..." the woman sounded embarrassed when she replied, and she pulled a strand of long hair being her ear in a nervous gesture.

"The truth is my husband recently passed away. I'm currently working part-time until I can find a more stable occupation, but the money is not much and so we had to move to a smaller apartment."

Hakuba's face twisted into a frown, evidently displeased by that new piece of information, but his tone when he spoke again was still perfectly polite.

"What are your qualifications?"

Uh. What a weird question to make upon hearing something like that.

  
(Wouldn't you normally just join in her grief and then move to something else?)

  
He looked a bit like he was plotting something, his expression kindling an instinctive wariness in Kaito, as he was used to see it end in some kind of trap at his expenses at heists.

"I...have a degree in applied chemistry?" Makiko-chan's mother sounded just as confused when she relayed that information.

Not minding her reaction, the expression on the detective's face seemed to lighten up at that news and he began to rummage in his bag to produce out of it a small notebook and a pen. Carefully he scribbled something on it and then tore to page to offer it to the woman.

"I know that they are searching for some permanent assistants with knowledge in general chemistry," he gave as only explanation.

The woman stared at him without making a move for a few moments, then her gaze dropped on the piece of paper and she carefully took it.

"Is this...is this for a job?" she hesitantly asked.

"I can't promise they will hire you - it's not my place to decide - but I can ask them to grant you an interview at the very least," Hakuba's sounded perfectly normal as he spoke those words, as if he were talking about the weather, "I will need your name."

"H-Haruno Masako."

"Very well, Haruno-san, I will call them to let them know about you." a polite smile was back on the blonde teen's face as he tucked away his notebook and pen, and made move to continue on his trip. "Have a nice day."

"Bye, Saguru onii-chan!" Makiko-chan immediately chirped in return, a grin on her face as she waved at him with enthusiasm.

A bit befuddled, Kaito watched as the lines of Hakuba's face softened. His smile was now a small, tiny thing, but it looked more sincere than anything he'd shown so far.

It made him look his age, Kaito noticed, only now realizing that the teen detective almost never showed expressions customary to a seventeen-year-old.

"Bye, Makiko-chan," he waved back before turning to continue down the road. It was only when Kaito's dove began to move again to follow, that he heard a startled cry of shock from Haruno-san.

"Wait! This says 'Hakuba Research Center'!  _ The _ Hakuba Research Center?!"

And then her voice was gone and the teen magician had to change position again to avoid losing track of his classmate.

  
******

  
In the next two weeks and a half of scouting, Kaito learned more things about the detective's habits than he had done in months of shared classes and heist-related extracurricular activities.

He blamed Hakuba's almost unnatural ability to hit just the right nerve to get a rise out of him for never noticing before, because a few of them were really not subtle at all.

1 - Hakuba apparently had a following of mini-fans in a group of local children that usually played in a nearby field after school.

In those occasions in which he walked back home rather than being driven back by his baaya, they would crowd him and loudly demand attention until their excitable hearts were properly satisfied.

Upon further investigation - and some bribing in the form of candies and magic tricks - it came to light that the detective was known among them as "Trivia onii-chan" because he shared "cool facts about birds, insects, and other animals" every time he passed by.

2 - Hakuba almost never spoke during lunch break.

His interaction with the rest of the class was for the most part relegated to a handful of minutes in the morning - most of them used for the aforementioned riling up of poor innocent phantom thieves in incognito - and those afternoons in which he was on clean-up duty.

In spite of the fact that, due to his job, the detective would probably be excused from the latter if he asked for it, he never gave the impression of even considering the possibility of missing those.

3 - On weekend days Hakuba skipped lunch.

They were his baaya's free days and she would only come to make dinner in the evening before leaving again. He seemed to completely forget that he was supposed to eat unless he was prompted to do so by someone else, because he never gave sign of distress at having an empty stomach until she came along.

4 - On two separate occasions Kaito caught him skipping lunch at school as well.

Both times, Hakuba went to the roof bringing with himself what looked like case files, became completely engrossed with his work, and promptly left his bento untouched until the bell signaling the end of lunch break rang.

5 - On one single occasion Hakuba went almost sixty-two hours without sleep.

Kaito only realized this because one of his tracking doves apparently took a shine to the detective, and she decided to frequently roost on the tree outside his room. Hakuba woke up in the morning, went and came back from school, did his homework, took out a pile of case files and went through it almost without interruption until it was morning and time to go to school again.

This pattern repeated itself for two days straight, until, in the evening of the third day, the detective simply passed out at his desk between one case file and the next.

6 - When at least one person was around, Hakuba wore The Smile like an armor.

No matter if they were a stranger walking down the same street, or people he regularly interacted with, he only showed either politeness, smugness, or amusement.

When no-one was around, his expression blanked-out.

If Kaito didn't have his doves following him with cameras on them, he would have never found out.

  
******

  
After the eighteenth day of watching, he finally holed up in KID's room to gather his thoughts and decide on what his next step would be. Talking to the detective would be pointless, as whatever kind of passivity the other teen had fallen into after his episode at school, was by now completely squashed back down and replaced with the usual level of confidence.

  
(And truth be told, if Kaito heard Hakuba say one more time that he was perfectly fine, he wasn't sure he would be able to resist the urge to clock him on the head, just to give him an excuse to finally admit that he was not, in fact, fine.)

  
So, again, he would have to do it the KID way.

It was time to manipulate a Nakamori, plant some traps, set-up a few misdirections, and give full reign to his trusted doves.

  
(There was also a heist to plan, but it would have to wait for now.)

  
******

  
To say that Saguru was beginning to feel confused after more than a week of Weird Events, was perhaps a bit of an understatement.

They started just short of three weeks since KID decided that transpassing in detective's homes was apparently a viable course of action. He still had no idea why the thief had felt the need to visit: it couldn't be worry like he had claimed - because Saguru was fairly certain that the other considered him an annoying hindrance at best, with the way he kept putting wrenches in his plans - but no hidden prank in his room had been triggered yet either like he initially assumed it would happen at some point.

In spite of his request, the thief never came back to visit again - or if he did, Saguru certainly hadn't noticed so far.

  
(Maybe KID had just realized that it was a pointless endeavor to keep watch on him, and he had moved on to something that would keep his attention better than the detective did.)

  
Then, on the nineteenth day since their encounter, Aoko-san cornered him before he could leave after classes ended, eyes filled with the kind of rightful purpose that he was more used to see on her father's face at KID's heists, and she politely demanded he pass the rest of the afternoon with her and Kuroba-kun.

He tried to gently let her down - he had work to do, and he had it on good authority that generally people didn't particularly find him a pleasant individual to hang-out with - but her insistence soon turned into a worried frown, and Saguru's brain seemed to make the snap decision that he could deal with the leftover reports later that evening if it meant it would erase that expression from her face.

The whole experience was...bewilderingly nice?

They avoided crowded spaces - which was appreciated - the likes of shopping centers and arcades, and she insisted that they went to the park to get crepes because apparently Kuroba-kun owed some to her to make amends for his usual lecherous behavior.

When they arrived, there were a few other teenagers - all seemed congregated at the crepes stand - some elderly couples taking a walk, and a handful of children playing among themselves.

  
(None of them he recognized as the ones that usually demanded him to share his knowledge on birds and bugs, but this was quite a way off from his usual route, so he wasn't surprised.)

  
Against all expectations Kuroba-kun seemed to be in a relatively good mood, and he showed less of his antagonizing self than usual - which again, was refreshing, but also left him on edge in a different, befuddled way. The magician still bit back if provoked, but he never once resorted to name-calling as he normally would during their interactions, maintaining instead their bickering impersonal and insult-free.

Saguru liked verbal sparring - it stretched the brain in a different way than solving cases did - but it was difficult to find a partner that understood that nothing that was being said was meant as an insult - especially one that was their age.

Kuroba-kun was smart - frighteningly so, in fact - and he didn't hold back his punches.

It was delightful.

  
*******

  
Two days later, on a Saturday, the appearing-and-disappearing-alarm-clocks debacle started.

It began with the sound of ringing at around ten in the morning. Saguru was going through what was posing itself to be a headache-inducing case of missing child - those were never pleasant,  _ never_, but they ended up being even less so when the parents' testimonies were so suspiciously vague - when the sound first started.

It was an alternating  _ beep beep beep _ that was somewhat muffled by the distance, but that was still enough to make him blink back from the black lines of typed words in front of him.

He frowned, wondering if Baaya had perhaps left an alarm on the day before, and he made his way down the corridor only to find a small square clock comfortably resting in a corner on the floor.

As soon as Saguru turned it off, another alarm started to ring, this time coming from somewhere at the bottom of the stairs. Again it took only for Saguru to press the tiny red button at the top of the clock for the usual sound of beeping to start again further down the corridor.

Normally Saguru would be worried that someone was obviously lurking around his home, but this felt like the brand of baffling behavior that only a very specific person would waste their time on, and  _ he _ wasn't about to do harm to anyone anytime soon.

The last of the clocks turned out to be waiting for him on the kitchen's table, just beside a bottle of cold green tea and a plate of  _ sakuramochi_. It was late September, and in no-way near spring. He wondered why anyone would go to all the trouble of giving him those specific sweets in that particular season.

  
(It certainly couldn't be because they were one of his favorite Japanese sweets.

That would be ridiculous.)

  
On his way back to his room, he found that every single one of the alarm clocks had disappeared.

He was interrupted again at 12:30:30 when the main door bell rang.

It turned out to be a delivery man with  _ zaru soba_. When questioned about it, Saguru was told that someone apparently had ordered for it to be brought at his address, with a very insistent recommendation of it arriving at specifically that exact time.

He decided to pointedly ignore the spot just at the base of the man's neck where make-up seemed to have been smudged by accident.

  
*******

  
In the late afternoon the same pattern with the alarm clocks repeated once more.

  
*******

  
Sunday went mostly the same way.

  
******

  
On the next Wednesday, at lunch break, Saguru was intercepted by his most troublesome classmate while he attempted to go to the roof.

The missing child case had given so far no leads - which was making him restless, as that was, to put it mildly,  _ a terrible sign _ \- and two more burglary cases - one of which was starting to look more like a case of masqueraded assault, as the burglar not only had ended up with a fractured skull, but he also turned out to be the nephew of the property's owner - had made their way into his hands on Monday.

There was also an additional fourth file that was given to him on Thursday by yet another Division 3 officer - Division 3 seemed to be having an influx of cases recently, and he couldn't well refuse to help out when he was asked to - but he still hadn't had time to check what that was about.

If Saguru didn't take care quickly of at least one of the cases, he would have to cut down on his sleep again. It was never a pleasant experience, but if there was need of it, so be it.

"Kuroba-kun, could you let me pass?" he asked when the classroom's door was blocked by the teen magician.

"Are you skipping on us again, Hakuba?" it was said with his usual cheerful demeanor, and Saguru had no idea why, since it was usually reserved to anyone but him - or Akako-san, but he still needed to understand what exactly Kuroba-kun had against her.

"I have work to do," he replied, nodding at files under his arm and hoping that it would be enough to be granted passage from the confusing bipedal sphinx in front of him.

He, of course, had no such luck.

"Nope, not gonna happen, we're vetoing that," the grin on Kuroba-kun's face became sharper as he turned his attention slightly at Saguru's left. "Right, Aoko?"

Oh goodie, they were tag-teaming him now...

For just an instant Saguru indulged himself in the fantasy of just shoving Kuroba-kun aside and force his way through, then he made the mistake of glancing at his side, his gaze ending up on the hopeful look on Aoko-san's face, and he was doomed. To hell with it, he just couldn't say no to this girl: it would make him feel like he had just attempted to drown a baby bird.

He opened his mouth to try at least an appearance of protest, except that was the moment when he saw Akako-san make her swift way towards them, and he clicked it back shut just as she sent an amused grin at their resident troublemaker.

"Ara, Kuroba-kun, are you getting along with Hakuba-kun now?" she inquired, smile as lovely as always, only to receive an annoyed glare in return.

"That's none of your busin--" Kuroba-kun's sharp retort was fortunately interrupted by an even more enthusiastic Aoko-san.

"Akako-chan! You should eat with us too!"

After that Saguru supposed he didn't have much choice but to stay.

  
(He would have to skip those hours of sleep after all.)

  
******

  
On Thursday his father came back from the series of conferences around Japan he had been stuck on for the last few weeks, and Saguru was finally able to spend a whole afternoon of playing board games with him. It made him happy and it somewhat balanced out the guilt at trying again to cut down his workload for that day.

  
(He could still put in a few hours before going to bed anyways.)

  
Dinner went splendidly as well, except for that weird moment when his father asked him if he had lost weight - Saguru hadn't checked recently, but he was relatively sure that he was fine, since his clothes still fit more or less the same way.

They talked about how his father's trip went, about school, and Saguru ended up being baited into admitting that he spent that one afternoon hanging-out with Aoko-san and Kuroba-kun at the park.

It seemed to make his father even more cheerful than usual.

"You should invite them over," he immediately proposed with a jovial laugh.

"Otou-san, please, I don't think either of them would be interested in that," Saguru frowned, not understanding where this new idea was coming from, as it had never happened before for him to have any of his classmates over. "They're both outdoorsy people, and I don't see how being cooped up in here would make for a pleasant afternoon for them."

For some reason, his father didn't look completely satisfied by his response.

  
******

  
On Saturday and Sunday the same pattern with the alarm clocks from the week before repeated itself, with the difference that it was well-timed enough that his father didn't seem to notice anything being amiss in the house.

Saguru was still not sure how KID exactly managed that one.

  
******

  
When it became clear that he would have to pull an all-nighter - one burglary was done with, but the maybe-burglary-maybe-covered-assault one was still unclear, and the missing child case was beginning to be considered a desperate situation - another of KID's brand of Weird Events happened.

The day went for the most part as expected - if one considered normal being forcibly dragged back into one's classroom by a shark-grinned teen magician at lunch break - but, when he stepped into his room after dinner with the intention of finally opening the fourth mysterious case file, he was met by three cooing doves comfortably sitting on the papers on his desk.

Upon further inspection - and a failed attempt at shooing them away from his work - he noticed both the small top hats perched on their heads - the blue bands clearly stating the name of each bird - and a familiar white piece of paper in each of their beaks.

Realizing that his attention was now firmly on them, the dove on the left - Asa-chan - offered him what was undoubtedly going to be another headache-inducing show of fussiness on a certain thief's part.

_ Mens sana in corpore sano_, the card read in flourishing western letters, and Saguru idly wondered if KID was planning to start using Latin from now on in his notices - that would certainly give Nakamori-keibu a new reason to curse at the thief, not that it usually took much to set him off.

Under the swirly black letters, rested a series of equally neat kanji.

_ Sleep, Tantei-san. _

The usual KID Doodle was switched out for a stylized dove with a top hat snoozing its day on a fluffy pillow.

It took Saguru three other attempts to come to the conclusion that the blasted birds KID set on him were, in fact,  _ not _ going to move from his papers, forcing him to go to bed early after all like the card so-unsubtlely suggested he did.

When he switched the lights off, he heard the rustling of feather and three soft  _ plop plop plop _ as the doves lightly landed on his pillow, and shuffled closer until one was snuggled up against the top of his head, one had tucked its tiny head against his nape, and the third one had made its sneaky way under the covers to rest against his collarbone.

He didn't have the heart to shove them away, as they had no fault for their master's mystifying madness.

The background sound of their gentle cooing sent him right to sleep anyways.

  
******

  
On the next day, before he could even leave his room, he found out that the missing child was dead.

She had been dead for two days, and if it weren't for the fact that he had a habit of checking the news every morning before going to school, he would not have realized it.

The police apparently had known for almost thirty-six hours.

Saguru, of course, was not police, and so he was not informed.

As he carefully sat on the chair next to his desk, trembling hands clutched in his lap and eyes squeezed shut while he tried to calm the raising rhythm of his heart, he wondered what the bloody hell he had been doing in the last week.

Why, exactly, was he wasting his time hanging-out with his classmates, getting roped into ignoring his duties, and being bossed around by doves, instead of doing his bloody job like he should?

Failing to catch a non-violent thief was fine. It was not ideal, but no-one was harmed by it.

But these kind of things? Missing children turned dead?

These kind of failures he could not allow to happen.

He could not allow himself any of this.

  
(He could not allow himself any distractions, he knew that, why did he let himself be swayed so much?)

  
His heartbeat would not slow down, no matter how much he tried to wish it to stop pounding inside his chest. His face felt cold, his lips tingled, his throat was tight, and air refused to pass through it properly.

_ Please stop_, every cell in his body screamed in panic, as if feeling under attack. Saguru's mind knew that he was not in any danger, but his body refused to listen, it kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming, until his ears were buzzing with white noise and his vision began to fail him.

_ Please stop. _

_ Please stop. _

_ Please stop. _

A gentle weight landed in his lap and his sight came back enough for him to make out the round comforting shape of a dove - Yoru-chan, the one with a handful of black speckles under her beak. He tried to will a shivering hand to reach out for her, but he only managed to raise it of a few centimeters. She squeezed her way under his fingers anyways, soft cooing sounds vibrating against his skin.

This time his hearing came back, and he heard the quiet rustling of feathers before another dove - Asa-chan, the one with dawn-red eyes - landed on his shoulder, shuffling closer to snuggle up against the crook of his neck. She cooed the same reassuring song, and Saguru felt his chest unlock somewhat, letting him take a few more even breathes.

He took a quick glance around the room and he spotted the third dove - Hina-chan, the one with a slightly darker right foot - perched on the windowsill, black eyes peering at him with a degree of attention that Saguru had only seen on birds of prey before. Her stance was tense, her tail flared wide and she looked ready to take flight at any given moment.

"I...I'm fine..." he managed to gasp, hoping she would understand. "There is no need...to call...your master."

The bird stared back at him, head tilted to one side, but she blessedly seemed to get the gist of his words and she remained still in her spot.

Slowly raising Yoru-chan to cradle her against his chest, he focused on his breathing.

In.

_ One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds. _

Hold.

_ One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds. _

Out.

_ One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds. _

Repeat.

So forth, so forth, and so forth, until finally even his heart quieted down.

He felt exhausted - almost as much as when he missed sleep for more than thirty-six hours straight - and his stomach was filled with nausea, but he would have to go down and have breakfast or his father would worry about his lack of appetite.

  
(It had happened before, although Saguru couldn't understand what was wrong if he skipped a meal once in a while: he rarely felt hungry on a daily basis, and his body didn't seem slowed down by it, surely it meant that he didn't need it all that much?)

  
He took a few more moments to reign in his thoughts, still bouncing around in his head in a disorganized mess, and centered himself before making his way down.

Somehow, he managed to both eat without feeling sick and to have a normal conversation with his father before leaving the house.

He was thankful that Baaya was around to drive him to school, because he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to make it the whole way to it if he were to go on foot.

  
******

  
At lunchtime, he was coaxed once again away from his duties by Aoko-san's sweet words and Kuroba-kun's brilliant mind. He should not have allowed that, but then again, the child was dead - she was dead and she would not come back, there was no hope of that, no matter how much he wished for it - and Saguru supposed he had one case less to work on now.

  
******

  
When classes ended, Aoko-san cornered him again.

"Hakuba-kun, are you free today? Would you like to come over for dinner?" she asked, smile wide and eyes sparkling with that eager hopefulness that characterized her.

Saguru...froze. That was the only way to describe it. He felt his whole body just come to a halt because he could not have possibly heard it right. Why would Aoko-san ask something like that of him? Wouldn't you normally ask those kind of things to friends?

  
(This had escalated so much, why did acquiescing to go to the park one time end up like this? It was supposed to be just a rare indulgence, not these continuing attempts at keeping him more and more away from his job.)

  
(He could not allow himself these many distractions.)

  
"I wouldn't want to impose..." he tried to let her down gently. It never seemed to work, not with Kuroba-kun watching the both of them and ready to intervene to give his childhood friend a hand if the need arose.

His heart was raising in rhythm again, Saguru could tell, but he kept his expression stubbornly polite as he tried to force it back to its proper speed.

_ Please not in front of Aoko-san and Kuroba-kun again_, he silently wished, hoping that for once his traitorous body would just listen. His fingertips were trembling, just so slightly, and he angled his hands away to keep them hidden from view.

_ Get a hold of yourself, Hakuba Saguru. _

_ They don't need to be burdened by this. _

_ Stop being such a bloody fail-- _

Very carefully, and slowly, knowing that it would attract too much attention to it if he went too fast about it, he let his hand slip in his pocket and clamped his fingers around his watch. He could not look at it, or Kuroba-kun would  _ know _ that something was wrong - Saguru was certain of it - so he tried to focus on the familiar shape of the incisions digging in the skin of his palm instead.

"I already asked Tou-san, and he said it was fine," Aoko-san continued, oblivious to his predicament and unwittingly making things even worse with the reminder that, if Saguru surrendered to her request, Nakamori-keibu would be there as well.

Saguru was a coward, and he did not wish to meet with the older man if the inspector had been already informed of how he had been - once again - unable to help in any concrete way.

He wanted to go - he wanted it so much his heart ached for it. He wanted to go and compliment Aoko-san for her cooking, he wanted to bicker amiably with Kuroba-kun, he wanted to ask Nakamori-keibu how his work was going, and he wanted to make sure that the man passed enough time with his daughter - because he knew from experience that being separated from one's parents was hard sometimes - but he squeezed those feelings in ruthless blood-dripping claws, and he shoved them back down where they came from, until only empty void remained in his chest, and he could finally turn a wide, polite smile at the girl in front of him.

"I don't think it would be possible today," he gave his reply, tone carefully constructed to appease after years of having to deal with adults judging him for his age rather than for his skills. "My father just came back home after being away for a few weeks, and I was hoping to pass the evening with him. Perhaps next time?"

He knew she would understand that feeling, that it would be a plausible excuse - and it wasn't really a lie in any case - so he was not surprised when her initial ruefulness was immediately replaced by solidarity.

When he turned to leave after exchanging goodbyes, he purposely ignored the way he could almost physically feel Kuroba-kun's gaze burning holes at the back of his skull.

  
******

  
As soon as he stepped in the house, he all but fled in his room, dreading the idea of having to interact with his father before he could finish to compose himself. Silently closing the door behind his back, he let his gaze fall on the three inquisitive pair of eyes perched in various locations of the room: Hina-chan was once again on the windowsill, peering at him as if to read his every weakness; Yoru-chan was nesting on his pillow, woken up by his entrance, and now blinking sleepily at him; Asa-chan was balanced on the back of the only chair in the room, attentive eyes watching him and waiting.

"I've homework to do," he quietly told the dawn-eyed dove, as he carefully lifted her from her perch and deposited her back on one of the farthest corners of the desk. She didn't seem to mind, and, after making sure that Saguru wasn't going to open one of his case files, she began to preen herself.

Saguru wondered how KID managed to train her for such a specific task. Case files and homeworks should look close enough - the quantity of papers surely felt analogous - but Asa-chan appeared to know the difference between the two, because when he tried to take a peek at the infamous fourth yet-unopened file, she immediately hopped closer in order to reproachfully peck him on the hand for his initiative.

  
******

  
Dinner could have gone better.

On one hand he managed to keep himself enough in check to have a normal conversation with his father - which was good - on the other hand, about halfway through it, his stomach closed-up and refused to go any further, forcing him to admit to not feeling very well that day and that he would have to retire early for the night - which was less ideal.

His father looked worried but Saguru assured him it was nothing important and that he was probably only tired.

Upon entering his room, his gaze fell on the fourth mysterious case file, making him pause.

He should really work on that, he inwardly sighed as he made his way to the desk. Slowly he peeled up the cover of the folder and took a wary peek inside.

Another missing person file.

At least this time it was not a child.

  
(No, it was a male teen about Saguru's own age whose household seemed to be of the "troubled" variety.)

  
_ How lovely_, he couldn't help but think venomously, and he wondered exactly why he was being asked to help with these cases at all.

  
(Why did Division 3 even hand this to him? Division 3 was supposed to work on thefts, not  _ this_. Was this some form of bullying? He had never been good at recognize those, the reasons behind it were always too alien and made no sense to him.)

  
Surely there were more qualified people to take care of this - people with some kind of backup to begin with, or human resources they could spread out for a search.

He wasn't very good at these kind of things anyways, he was good at taking in details and analyzing them over and over until some kind of breakthrough was found - it was why he helped Division 2 to begin with, their kind of job was what he was best at and he could be most useful in aiding.

He should at least take a look at the file - he had been asked to help, he should at least do that much - but his mind would not settle, and Asa-chan was staring at him reproachfully once again. His ears were buzzing without rest, and he wondered why, since his heart beat seemed to be fine so far - his breathing was coming out with a bit of trouble, but he was sure that if he would just sit at his desk and put all his attention on the case, it would soon return to normal.

He stared at the folder, and stared, and stared, and stared until ten minutes passed by and he had not as much as made a single move.

In the end he decided to let it go and he marked it as a lost cause. Focus would simply not come, so he got himself ready for the night and he slipped under the covers of his bed instead.

KID's doves were a warm presence on his chest and next to his neck, soft feathers brushing against his skin and quiet cooing sounds trying their best at making him fall asleep.

He still ended up staring at the ceiling for most of the night.

  
******

  
The next day, a heist notice arrived at the police station.

As soon as it was forwarded to him and Saguru read the uncharacteristically clearly-stated time and location of the target at the top of the white card, every doubt he was growing to have that KID might think of him as something other than a troublesome nuisance, completely vanished from his mind.

  
(He should have known that it had all been wishful thinking on his part in any case.)

  
******

  
_ We be birthed by Mnemosyne, sweet ruler of cruel dreams. _

_ We be made of soft voices from beloved beings. _

_ We be made of gentle touches and praising words. _

_ We be made of silent rules and long kept secrets. _

_ Do you know when to keep us and when to let us go? _

  
******

  
To put it kindly, Ginzo was having a horrible feeling about this heist.

When KID targeted something other than a Big Jewel it was never a good sign, because it either ended up being an imposter trying to frame the thief for murder - Ginzo had no idea why people were dumb enough to still attempt that one, since it never worked out for them - or there was something that KID was trying - in that maddeningly mocking way of his - to show them.

This certainly wasn't the first time that the thief had clearly stated where his target was held - it had been a while, but it wasn't unheard of. This, however, was the first time that his notice still came with a riddle regarding his objective in spite of that: it had never been a mix before.

It should please Ginzo because it made his job easier, but, not only he was used to be extremely suspicious of any change of pattern in KID's behavior by now, he was also hyper-aware of the fact that if they failed to prevent the thief from stealing his target, this could turn into a giant mess.

Because of course that madman could not go for a nice shiny rock held in a 30-storey building and owned by some rich guy with too much money at their disposal as per his usual. No. He had to go and target the home of one of the Superintendent General's cousins.

Takahashi Tomoko-san - formerly Hakuba Tomoko - joined the Takahashi - a family known for their rich entrepreneuring endeavors - when she was relatively young through an arranged marriage. Her husband, Takahashi Masaru, was currently on a business trip, as it seemed to be usual for him, and she was left in charge of the household.

As far as Ginzo could tell in the interaction they had while she showed them around the property, she was as far from the Superintendent General as anyone could get: she was slimly built, with long black hair she kept tied in a modest hairdo, and where the Superintendent General was cheery and had a sunny disposition, she was polite but cold, never showing extreme emotions on the delicate features of her face.

She hadn't been particularly cooperative at the beginning, unwilling to disrupt the routine of the house, and claiming as the reason for opposing all that fuss the fact that there was nothing of great value in the property that a thief could be interested in: they kept all their major valuables held elsewhere.

This, however, was not a normal heist.

No gem of the kind KID went after was kept in the house, but the location couldn't be wrong either since, for once, the thief had been clear at least in that regard. So what was left for them to do was to guess what he was after solely from the riddle he'd left behind.

After consideration from both his people and Hakuba-kun, it was agreed upon that the most likely solution was "memories" due to the reference to Mnemosyne, the goddess presiding over memories in Greek mythology. It wasn't much to go by, but the following lines of the riddle seemed to be pointing at the same thing - they didn't reference anything else, and they could also describe different kind of memories that any person would hold.

As far as they could tell, the most likely candidate to be the thief's target was an old journal that had been passed down the Takahashis for more than two hundred years which, while having some historical importance, wasn't really worth all that much to people outside the family.

Under some very insistent passive-aggressive suggestion on Takahashi Tomoko-san's part, they decided to put it in a separate and currently unused room, away from everything else that might be ruined by KID's passage as, while the woman didn't care much for the thief, she also didn't want the rest of the household to be disrupted by his shenanigans.

Ginzo decided not to protest too much to her demands, because having more space to navigate around the sealed box containing the journal could only be an advantage when trying to catch that particular brand of slippery thief.

What really worried the inspector, however, were not the first four lines of the notice, but rather the last line.

_ Do you know when to keep us and when to let us go? _

This was not a normal heist, and so Ginzo had the keen impression this was some kind of clue on what KID's real intentions were, but, no matter how much he tried to wrap his head around it, he couldn't come up with a satisfying answer to it.

  
(Was it a way to say that he would steal the journal for sure? But it didn't make much sense to stress something that obvious. It didn't sound quite right.)

  
Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Takahashi-san calmly walk through the room, taking account of the Task Force's proceedings, and giving a few comments here and there of her own. She still acted perfectly polite, but her initial unwillingness to let them do their job and her insistence that there should be as little fuss as possible, were beginning to feel more ominous than annoying somehow, now that the initial irritation had subsided.

Upon asking Hakuba-kun about what kind of people his relatives were, he had been told by the boy that for a while, before moving to England, he used to be in their care in the afternoon after school, and to pass time getting through homework with his cousin until someone could come to get him and bring him home.

The boy didn't have much to share, as he was now mostly estranged to that part of his family. The only thing that Ginzo managed to get out of him that was somewhat of interest was that, according to him, Takahashi Tomoko-san was a very strict parent, the kind of which would sometimes exceed in zelousess when curbing their children's bad habits.

He was immediately assured by the teen detective that he didn't mean that any kind of corporal punishment was going on - not as far as he remembered in any case - but it still left Ginzo with the impression that what he was being told, was also being carefully picked out.

Which brought him to another thing that had been bothering him so far: Hakuba-kun's behavior.

Ginzo was fairly sure that the kid had been acting normally on the way there, with his usual level of polite smugness that seemed to be just part of his personality, but since the moment they'd stepped into the house, the teen detective had dropped his gaze to the ground and almost never raised it back up. The only time that the inspector had seen him rest his eyes on someone's face while speaking to them, was when Akira-kun - Takahashi-san's son - approached him and the two of them began to quietly speak to one another in hushed voices.

The inspector wasn't even sure that Hakuba-kun realized what he was doing.

Maybe it was just his impression, and he was being a bit paranoid after that whole debacle with Division 3 and a certain bad habit that had circulated for a few weeks among its members, before he was able to put a stop to it.

  
(The debacle with Division 3 had gone like this: the day before the heist notice arrived, Aoko - after some nudging from Kaito-kun, because the kid could be truly sneaky when he wanted to be - mentioned that Hakuba-kun seemed to be always busy with cases from the police, so much so that sometimes he skipped lunch in favor of working on them.

Ginzo was reasonably outraged by the news, as that was definitely something that, not only wasn't supposed to happen, but that also went outright against the boundaries that had been set by the Superintendent General to keep his son working for Division 2.

Normally, before anything was forwarded to the teen, a formal request should find its way to Ginzo's desk so that the inspector could evaluate if the kid's intervention was really needed or not. This was a well-established rule in Division 2 that had been set specifically because apparently Hakuba-kun - in spite of being the same age as Ginzo's daughter - was already afflicted by that particular brand of disease called "being a workaholic" that was usually reserved for actual adults already in the workforce, and if he was asked politely enough to help, he would never refuse.

Which came back to a handful of slackers in Division 3 and the fact that they had not only obviously missed the memo about the fact that Hakuba-kun was to only work for Division 2, but also the one in which was stated that they should do their damn job for themselves instead of fucking around all day long.

Ginzo had made sure to remind them in quite colorful and loud - very loud, because he had seen no reason why their coworkers shouldn't be made privy of their behavior - wording that maybe if they worked their asses once in a while instead of waiting for children to solve cases for them, they wouldn't have so much fucking backload to still work their way through.

He also less loudly - but more viciously - reminded them that Hakuba-kun  _ was _ in fact the Superintendent General's only son, so maybe they should consider the consequences that would come, if the kid were to drive himself to an early grave on their behalf.)

  
While Ginzo could admit that he had maybe developed a bit of a protective streak towards the kid in recent months, he was also sure he wasn't imagining the weariness and edgy carefulness with which Hakuba-kun treaded the house, nor the way in which he was keeping himself outside of anyone's path.

Normally, the boy would have gone around the room already several times to make sure KID hadn't left any surprises for the Task Force in the past few days, but this time he was lingering near the walls, awkwardly shuffling to a different spot only when he realized that someone's attention was on him. Ginzo was almost sure that the teen wasn't even aware of the fact that he was quite evidently messing up his usual pre-heist routine.

  
(Judging by the worried look on some of his men, he wasn't the only one who noticed that something was off.)

  
He watched with some apprehension as the kid gravitated from one corner of the room to the other, wondering if he should approach him and try to convince him to go home, until, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Takahashi-san move closer with the obvious intention of speaking with him. It took for her to arrive at less than a few steps away from him for Hakuba-kun to finally notice her. For an instant he looked startled, his eyes going wide in a way that reminded Ginzo of a cornered animal.

Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong.

Trusting his instincts, he strode over, closing the distance separating them to hear then end tail of Takahashi-san's words.

"--school going?" the question sounded normal enough, a relative whom Hakuba-kun was acquaintance with, making small talk and getting updated on his situation.

"I trust you're the first in your grade?"

"I..." the teen began, and he looked so lost and uncertain that Ginzo almost grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away from there. Then, suddenly, the expression vanished from the boy's face and it was replaced by the polite smile that he always wore - the same one he had dropped upon entering the house.

"No, that would be Kuroba-kun, Tomoko oba-san," he finally answered, tone of voice steady and eyes betraying nothing of what was going through his mind.

"Is that so?" Takahashi-san inquired. She didn't sound outright displeased per se, but her lips pursed in a way that hardened her expression just of a fraction, making the delicate features of her face look as cold as a statue's.

"Hakuba-kun is right after Kaito-kun with my daughter," Ginzo intervened, watching her carefully. He didn't miss the way her eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly at his words, not even when a short, polite smile bent her mouth while she turned her attention on him.

"Ah, well," she commented, bringing a hand to her lips in a gesture of consideration, "I suppose it can't be helped since he insists on working at the same time..."

Taking advantage of the following lul in the conversation, the inspector eyed the teen detective at his side as covertly as he was able to, finding that he had crossed his arms on his chest in unconscious defensiveness. This was not normal behavior, no matter how much Hakuba-kun tried to hide the tenseness in his shoulders and the wariness with which his gaze kept darting to the ground when he thought that neither Ginzo nor Takahashi-san were watching.

"Although if the results are analogous to his studies, I'm not surprised that this thief is still around..." the woman continued absently, before turning again to the teen at their side.

"You've been after him for a while now, haven't you, Saguru-kun?" there was again that polite but cold smile that was beginning to make the hair at the back of Ginzo's neck raise with unease.

"...since February..." Hakuba-kun confirmed. Neither his tone nor his posture had changed, but somehow, to the inspector's policeman eyes, he looked now strung up, as if ready to flee at the drop of a hat. That was not how you usually reacted to your relatives being nosey, no matter how dislikable and rude they were being.

He had never seen this kind of defensive, almost avoidant behavior in the teen detective before: if anything, Hakuba-kun usually erred on the side of hubris. In fact, in more recent months, it had come to Ginzo's attention that the boy also had an equally marked and sneaky tendency to disregard his own health if a "superior objective" - like a heist - necessitated his full focus.

He still remembered that one time in which the teen risked severe hypothermia because, according to him, cashing KID was more important and "he could wait, it was no trouble," and that didn't speak of any kind of instinct of self-preservation whatsoever.

  
(Which was a whole lot of bullshit all of its own as far as Ginzo was concerned, but he wasn't going to think about  _ that _ particular memory too long, because otherwise he would cave in to the temptation of  _ actually _ dragging the kid away and give him  _ again _ a piece of his mind regarding his safety.)

  
"Ah, I see."

That was  _ not _ a good tone. Ginzo grinded his teeth, reminding himself sternly that he should not be telling the woman off just because she sounded as if she had just seen a stain on her new tablecloth.

"Well, wouldn't it be better for you to focus on your studies instead? There is no need for a child to help the police with these kind of things anyways."

Good manners, he needed to answer with good manners.

  
(He wanted to drop  _ keigo _ so badly.)

  
"Hakuba-kun is a great asset to Division 2," he managed to say - even sounding actually polite! How great, Aoko's scolding was actually having some results! - "He's been of invaluable help in solving quite a few cases since he was given to our care."

And now she looked as if she were questioning the police's competence.

Oh, if only she weren't related to the Superintendent General...

Ginzo would have loved to tell her exactly what he thought about her spouting around her opinion on things that really concerned no-one other than the kid's actual parents.

"Even so, there is no reason for him to do both at the same time: he can always think about work later," she finally seemed to settle on a response. "It's not ideal for a child to focus their attention to so many things at once. Study should come first, and then, once they're done with that, they can help adults in whatever fashion they desire. It would be too hard on them otherwise."

She made her opinion sound extremely reasonable, it was said with such careful concern and with such specific wording to give the impression that she was worried about Hakuba-kun's wellbeing. Except, the inspector noticed, it sounded a bit like she was implying that kids should only focus on their duties - studying - and that Hakuba-kun's interest in detective work was nothing more than a hobby.

"I'm sure the Superintendent General took the advice into consideration when he allowed his son to help with police work," Ginzo was not usually prone to spite, but he had to admit, it gave him some kind of vicious satisfaction to watch her expression harden into a iron mask at his remark.

"Well, in that case I've no doubt that Saguru-kun will remedy to whatever gap he might have left before the next midterms," she smiled again, back to her usual cold politeness. "Now, if you'd excuse me, I'm sure you both have still much work to do, and I wouldn't want to keep you from your duties."

What was wrong with this woman exactly?!

"What's her deal?!" Ginzo couldn't help but growl aloud in annoyance when she was out of hearing range, turning his attention back on the boy standing at his side. Hakuba-kun was sending him a wary and somewhat apologetic look so unlike himself, that it made the inspector wonder why the teen detective felt like  _ he _ should be the one making excuses for her behavior.

"Tomoko oba-san is just a bit strict..." he finally managed, voice tense, and shoulders even more so.

_ That _ was not how Ginzo would have described her. In fact, the kind of epithets he was thinking about were definitely of variety that would elicit quite a few horrified gasps if he were to surrender to the temptation of actually saying them aloud.

He had no idea what her problem was, but it wasn't helping his stress level at all: not only he had to deal with an Unusual Heist while keeping an eye on the youngest member of the KID Task Force, but the owner of the current target was also so far acting like a despicable human being, and sneaking stealth insults at the aforementioned youngest member of the KID Task Force because, according to her, his greatest fault was that he was currently trying to help keeping her damn property safe.

All this would already be enough to justify, in Ginzo's opinion, several drinks after the whole heist was done with.

Then there was the matter of Akira-kun.

The kid looked like a walking nervous wreck. Where Hakuba-kun had been refusing to meet anyone's eye, the other teen had been outright flinching away whenever someone tried to approach him. He looked unsure and jumpy with so many people around, and just a step away from bolting.

Ginzo would have chucked it to a very shy, potentially reclusive personality, if not for the fact that he could still vividly remember the skin-crawling discussion he just had with his mother. At his side, Hakuba-kun seemed to notice the issue with the dark-haired boy as well, because he suddenly seemed to lose all of his previous tenseness in favor of concern.

"Excuse me," he murmured and then took off towards the other teen without another word. Once next to him, Hakuba-kun leaned closer to whisper something that the inspector couldn't catch from the distance, and he received a short, grateful nod, adorned of a tentative smile in return.

Ginzo watched as Akira-kun himself took off to approach his mother, wondering what was going on now, only to do a double take when the dark-haired teen raised his head, and the inspector saw the same identical polite smile that Hakuba-kun always wore on Akira-kun's face. The bent of the mouth, the way his face looked now filled with smugness, and the confident set of the shoulders, everything seemed perfectly practice to look the same.

It was unnerving.

"Oka-san, may I be excused for the evening, there are some papers for tomorrow's classes that I would like to review before retiring for the night," Akira-kun's voice was carefully neutral, betraying none of the distress that the teen had shown, and it made Ginzo's skin raise in unease for how jarring it sounded compared to what he had witnessed so far.

"Ah yes, of course, Akira, you may go," Takahashi-san replied with a dismissive gesture of her hand. "You don't need your studies to be hindered by a thief's tomfoolery in any case."

"Thank you, Oka-san."

After giving his mother a polite bow, the kid seemed to finally snap out of whatever state he'd fallen in, and all but fled from her, once again as nervous as before.

Hakuba-kun watched him go the whole way out of the room, and only then he let out a small, barely-visible sigh of relief as his shoulders relaxed of a fraction from the tense pose he had been holding during the whole exchange.

What exactly did Ginzo just watch unfold? What kind of dynamic was that?

Because there were several unpleasant alarm bells ringing now at the back of his mind, and all of them seemed to be waving "wrong" signs more at the father part of him than at the policeman one.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ginzo saw Hakuba-kun pull out his watch and stare at it with focused intensity, as if he could find the secrets of KID's intentions for that night in the regular ticking of its hands. His mouth was silently forming each second as it went by, and his thumb was tracing the incision on the back in an unconscious gesture of uneasiness.

The kid had gravitated once again towards the walls, out of the way, without the inspector realizing it.

He wanted to go there and make sure he was alright - his father instincts were screaming for it - but there was no time anymore, so he turned to his men instead.

"Get ready, everyone! It's almost time!" he shouted, seeing with approval as they all tensed, at ready. Ginzo might not know everything that was going on inside the thief's head that night, but he figured that the best solution to his frustration at the moment was to just grab the maddening man once he appeared, and get an answer directly from the source of all his stress.

It was just past 11PM when the light suddenly went out casting the whole room in pitch black darkness.

"Get the backup lights on!" the inspector immediately roared, by now well used to this kind of tricks from the thief.

This, however, was not an usual heist, and so, before anyone could obey to his request, a floodlight was switched on again, making them all blink and freeze at the sudden change, their attention immediately caught by it.

It was one single light that was being cast from above, creating a wide circle around both thief and the target. It belonged to none of them, and the magician must have installed it on the room's ceiling without their knowledge.

All along the edge of the patch of light it created, the men that were supposed to guard the journal laid unconscious as if to cordon it off from the rest of the Task Force.

Ginzo couldn't see how he did it - some kind of cable, maybe? - but KID was hovering over the box in which the journal was contained, white cape flapping at his back in the usual appropriately dramatic manner, and the tip of one shoe just barely touching the wooden cover. He looked a bit like a ghost, all eerie white and shadowed face under that one single light washing over him.

"Gentlemen," he greeted, voice clear and real and there - not any kind of illusion then, it was definitely him - bowing his head at Ginzo before adding, "My lady," and turning somewhere at his right. The inspector couldn't really see well from were he was standing, but given the people in the room, he could only be addressing Takahashi-san.

  
(This was not normal, he almost never addressed the owners of his target, unless he had been outright challenged by them, what was really going on here?)

  
"How nice to see you have so eagerly accepted my invitation," the thief continue with not a care in the word, voice bright and cheery, although the lighting made it look as if he were some kind of spirit, come to bring them misfortune instead.

"Stop it right there, KID!" the inspector couldn't help but shout in return, frustration, tiredness and nerves having by that point frayed his patience for good.

"I would love to pass time in your charming company, Nakamori-keibu," the thief hummed in return, not fazed in the slightest by his outburst. "But I fear I've a previous engagement booked up for the rest of the night."

With those words, the thief tilted his head so that his monocle would be in sight. It flashed bright under the floodlight, hiding the eye behind it, but the inspector had the keen impression he was being watched, as if in silent warning.

"Besides, Nakamori-keibu, there is no need of that tonight..."

There was something wrong with KID's grin, an instinctive part of Ginzo's mind noticed - the part that had developed after years of having to deal with the thief magician and his own special brand of trickery and madness - it looked just a little bit too sharp, just a little bit too wicked, all playfulness absent and put aside for once.

"...in fact, I should apologize, because, you see, this time around I put you at an unfair disadvantage."

"What are you talking about, KID?!" Ginzo shouted, having long since passed the point of exasperation after dealing with all kinds of nerve-wracking bullshit that evening.

  
(The magician was here, and no-one was murdered, so it must be the other kind of Unusual Heist.

What was he trying to show them this time?!)

  
If possible, the grin on KID's face only grew wider and thinner, looking disquietingly similar to the cut of a knife rather than anything supposed to show myrth or mischief.

"What I came for this time was far too precious to risk any of you seeing through my plans beforehand, and so I already took it."

_ Not the usual method_, Ginzo's brain roared in alarm,  _ not good, not good, not good! _

"But fear not, Nakamori-keibu!" the thief sounded cheerful, but not the kind you would feel from happiness, it gave more the impression of what a wolf would feel before sinking its teeth in a prey. "Because I've full intention of properly giving it back. Every single one of them."

What?

And then something fell from the ceiling and hit one of his subordinates right on the helmet with a dull  _ thump_.

  
******

  
_ Thump. _

Blinking against the light illuminating once again the room now that the backup generator was switched on, Saguru watched with a frown as another black shape fell from the ceiling and hit the fifth member of the KID Task Force in a row dead on the head. He couldn't see clearly what trick the thief was using exactly - there wasn't enough light so far up in the room to properly study it - but the items had been dropping at a consistent pace of one every 5 seconds.

_ Thump. _

It was a testament to how much KID knew his pursuers and their habits at his heists, that every time someone tried to move closer to get him, they would be invariably sabotaged in their attempts by yet another dark shape falling right on their helmet.

_ Thump. _

On a normal heist, Saguru would give chase as well, but his mind was too much of a jumble that night: between the location, the  _ lovely _ chat he had with his aunt, his worry for Akira-kun's state of mind, and Nakamori-keibu's hovering, the only thing he felt like doing, was going home and rest.

Or begin working on his report.

He was always required to write one after every KID heist after all, he could get a head start so that the next day there would be more time for him to work on the only one case he had left waiting for him on his desk.

  
(Division 3 had stopped asking for help - maybe they had finally caught up with their backlog - but Saguru was sure that if he asked around the station there would be something he could do to help. It wouldn't be good for him to stay idle only because no-one came forth with tasks for him: it was already bad enough that he essentially had himself put on the KID Task Force through sheer nepotism, he didn't need to be known for slacking off if he really managed to join Division 2 after he was done with his studies, like he planned to do.)

  
When he looked up, the thief was gone once again from sight - this time apparently for good - leaving the Task Force to deal with the mess that was being left behind his passage.

_ Thump. _

Something hit the floor about half a meter away from him.

When he lowered his gaze to peer at the object, he tensed recognizing the plain dark grey cover of the notebook - it was always plain dark grey, "no color that could distract a child's wandering mind," Tomoko oba-san had told him when he had asked about it. It wasn't one of his, as Saguru knew well all the creases that those had, so when he leaned down to pick it up with barely trembling fingers and he looked inside, he was not surprised to find Akira-kun's handwriting on it.

It looked a bit different than how he remembered it, a bit more practiced - the notebook looked newer than his as well - and some time must have passed since Saguru last saw Akira-kun write in one of them.

It must have continued even after Saguru went to stay with his mother in England.

  
(His father had been so worried that he had suddenly stopped laughing, why had he forgotten about that? His father thought that he was having trouble at school with his peermates and believed that staying with her in a different environment for a while would make him good.)

  
The handwriting lining the white pages with black ink didn't belong to the six-year-old that Akira-kun had been when Saguru last saw him. It belonged to a ten maybe eleven-year-old.

It must have continued for a long time...

  
(If Saguru had told anyone, would she have stopped?

But Saguru wasn't supposed to talk about these things with other people, he was supposed to take care of his weakness on his own. How could he have told anyone at the time? He felt guilty just thinking about it  _ now_.)

  
When he finally managed to pull his gaze away from the notebook, he was met with the sight of a both familiar and equally small white figure, peering at him from the barely opened crack of the room's side door. A pair of dawn-colored eyes waited just enough to make sure he took notice of them, before Asa-chan vanished from sight in a silent invitation to follow.

He spared a glance at the rest of the room, noticing that the rest of the Task Force was busy either avoiding being conked on the head, or checking the glass case in which the supposed target of the heist rested. Saguru had no doubt that it was still safely there as KID had said it himself: he had already stolen what he'd come for.

  
(The notebooks were still falling, how many were there? Was Akira-kun still forced to write on them whenever he made a mistake? They were so many...)

  
Without saying a word, or lingering any further to see what reaction they would elicit once people began reading their content, he silently made his way out of the room, following in the path left by Asa-chan and into the side corridor. The dove was waiting for him a few meters away, but she took off again as soon as she spotted him.

Without hesitation, Saguru followed her lead.

Far behind him he could hear Nakamori-keibu shouting - "What are these?!" - as loud as usual, although his anger sounded sharper and far more vicious than anything he had ever directed at KID.

So this was what the thief had meant with his notice after all.

Memories.

He had stolen memories this time around.

  
( _"They're childhood memories, I suppose." _ )

  
And, after stealing them, he was now giving them back to the police as per usual.

"Care to explain these, Takahashi-san?", Nakamori-keibu sounded livid even from the long distance now separating them.

Tracing after the dove and through the dimly lit corridor, Saguru ignored the sounds slowly fading into a faraway whisper behind his back, until he found his way to the door that gave on the backyard garden.

When he stepped outside, he was met with the sight of a familiar top hat and white suit, bathed in moonlight and waiting with a hand raised to let Asa-chan fly to it. The dove landed without making a sound, and Saguru watched while the thief magician brought her to his shoulder and she found her way to hide somewhere under all the white layers of clothes.

"Good evening, Tantei-san," KID's attention was on him now, an inscrutable smirk splitting his face, "I hope the heist wasn't too taxing for you."

There was a hint of worry in his tone - a tiny little thing, but present nonetheless - as if for once the thief were afraid that he had overstepped somehow. There was also no reason for any kind of concern to be there, as KID had never shown to care about such things when Saguru was part of it - he sometimes did when Nakamori-keibu was involved, but not Saguru, never Saguru.

"I left the location of today's heist clearly stated, in case you preferred to pass up this particular performance of mine."

Ah, so that was why.

What a weird thing to do, KID had never shown such consideration before.

"No damage was done," the detective replied, not understanding where this sudden change in behavior was coming from. "However I'd like to ask this one thing: why did you go to all the trouble to do this?"

"Of course you would ask that, Tantei-san," another smile made its way on KID's face as he said those words, it was neither his usual secretive crescent moon smile, nor his manic grin made of knife-sharp teeth and mocking laughter. Instead it was small and sweet, filled with all the fondness that Saguru had never seen on thief's face before.

It made his breath catch in his throat, and his cheeks feel warm with a feeling he wasn't exactly able to describe.

"But before answering your question, I'll ask one of my own," KID retorted, slowly tilting his head to let a ray on moonlight lit part of his face. It looked like a deliberate gesture, but it couldn't be so, because the thief wouldn't willingly risk himself be seen without the safe protection of the shadows casted by his hat.

"Did you know that in the six weeks I've been watching you, I only saw you genuinely smile twice?" he asked and in the dim light it looked as if his lips pursed in a displeased frown. He only elaborated once he realized that the detective had no comment to express on the matter, and he would remain silent.

"One time you were waving goodbye at a little girl you'd just befriended; the second time you were playing board games with your father."

Saguru had no idea what the thief was getting at with this line of thought, he wasn't even sure why the other would be invested enough in something like that to keep track of it.

"Your questionable hobby of watching people without their knowledge aside, I don't see how this helps explaining your behavior."

Out of the corner of his eyes, the teen detective saw a white-gloved hand twitch for an instant, as if the thief had just suppressed the instinct to clench it into a fist. He wasn't sure why his confusion would warrant this reaction - it seemed legitimate to him, as the other was being his usual cagey self - but whatever feeling he might have elicited in the thief was swiftly hidden from sight before it could fully come to surface.

"Then let me answer your question more clearly," KID hummed, head tilted once again in a way that it would show his un-monocled eye - indigo, the same maddening indigo that had been staring at him with stubborn purpose for days.

"In the last few weeks I've found out many things that I didn't know before about you, Tantei-san," the thief continued, raising a hand to list his findings, one finger at a time. "Although you don't look the type, you actual like children and get along with them well; if you cross path with someone in need, you never hesitate to give a hand; if a task is given to you, you always put all your focus and attention to it, sometimes forgetting your own health..."

It took a moment for Saguru to realize that the white-clad magician was moving again, treading closer the more he spoke, until only a handful of steps separated them. He didn't seem worried that the detective might try to catch him.

  
(He would be right not to be, because Saguru felt no desire of it now, not after what the thief had done that evening.)

  
"...you have trouble believing that people would want to befriend you; you wish you could fix all evil in the world..."

Another step went by, and, across the short distance remaining between them, the teen detective had no trouble recognizing either the messy hair refusing to stay put under the white top hat, or the child-like spark in the thief's familiar eyes.

Saguru had no idea what to do with this situation, he had no idea what to do with a KID that was not making any attempt at escaping his grasp - he had no idea what to do with a KID that was showing so much of his face to him, how was Saguru supposed to pretend he wasn't seeing this?

"...and lastly, Tantei-san: the reason you're a detective is that you genuinely want to help."

His breath caught in his throat. This was not how people usually described his behavior -  _ smug_,  _ proud_,  _ show-off_,  _ spoiled_, those were much more common.

  
(He stopped years ago to try to convince people that he just wanted to help, no-one ever believed him when he did, and they always became more suspicious if he didn't give some form of selfish reason for asking to give a hand with a case.)

  
When Saguru focused his attention back to that face who he could clearly see but he was not supposed to, the thief's lips were tilted up again in that sweet smile that made his face feel warm with confusing emotions.

"My behavior tonight is easily explained and there are two reasons for it," KID hummed, tone oh-so-gentle, as if he were talking to someone precious rather than the detective.

"The first is that you deserved someone to do it for you, as you would not take care of yourself on your own," he paused enough to let his smile grow into a playful grin, eyes sparkling with child-like excitement at the thought of what he was about to reveal.

"The second is more self-serving - I  _ am _ a selfish thief after all - and it is as follow," the hand that had been counting everything that the thief had found out about Saguru, twisted and a red-tipped white rose appeared in it, held gently in gloved fingers as KID offered it to the detective.

"This humble thief would like the honor to be allowed to court you officially, Tantei-san."

The rose had one single jagged leaf and a crooked petal on the same side. It gave him something to focus on while he tried to find some kind of explanation behind the magician's request.

"You're not humble in the slightest," Saguru drily pointed out, words leaving him automatically at what felt like an outrageous claim. It pulled a startled laugh of delight out of the thief.

_ He is so beautiful_, Saguru's mind supplied, unbridled by the sight of gleaming indigo eyes, flawless creamy skin, full lips, and dark chocolate hair.

_ And so utterly ridiculous. _

  
(He was adorable.)

  
"What I'm saying here, Tantei-san," the thief continued, still quietly chuckling with amusement, "is that I find you charming and lovely, and all that it took for me to notice was to actually  _ look _ at you."

_ I'm seeing you as well right now, you stupid thief. Your face is in full light. _

If Saguru reached out to pull the top hat off of his head, would KID stop him? What if he reached for the monocle instead?

He had no doubt about who was hiding under that illogically flashy costume - he'd never had any, he just lacked any decisive proof about his identity.

"KID-san," he finally addressed the thief magician once again, gaze shifting from the rose still held in a white-clad hand to hopeful indigo eyes. "You said you have been watching me for weeks, correct?"

He waited for the other to nod in confirmation before continuing. There was a curious look now on his face, as if he were trying to guess what the detective's intentions were, and Saguru was silently pleased with himself that he could still keep him on his toes.

"So then, as of now, you know more of me than I know of you."

Curiosity became a frown of uncertainty, but Saguru didn't leave him time to further question the situation - KID had been shameless and unrepentant in his demands that night, and so the detective would do him the favor of doing likewise.

"What I mean to say is," Saguru clarified, pausing just for an instant to brace himself before stating his terms. "If your intentions are as true as you claim them to be, then ask me again properly with your face."

The thief froze.

His expression didn't change, nor his grip on the flower did, but Saguru saw his unprotected eye widen just of a fraction in alarm. A few moments of silence stretched between them as KID seemed to evaluate his request, then, with a flourishing gesture of the hand, the rose vanished back where it came from, and the thief brought his hand up to finger the brim of his hat.

It took still a bit more time - enough for Saguru to wonder if he'd asked too much - before the thief magician tipped his head enough to show him a wide, pleased smile.

"Good to see you're still you, Tantei-san," he grinned, all teeth but no sharp edge. "Your terms are acceptable to me."

He then allowed his hand fall once again, taking the detective's own between gloved fingers, before very slowly - letting him enough time to pull away if he so desired - raising it to his mouth and pressing a soft kiss where his thumb had been drawing gentle circles just a moment before.

"I shall see you again in the morning then," he bid his farewell without shame, not caring for the blush that was threatening to take over Saguru's face at his gesture.

_ Shameless_, he thought, _ this thief is completely shameless. _

  
(He was so maddeningly endearing.)

  
Soft lips tracing his skin on their way to leave his hand, the detective watched as KID took a few steps back, fingers once again tipping his hat in a sign of parting, before vanishing with his usual fanfare of pink smoke and confetti, leaving him with a lingering tingling sensation where the thief's mouth had been.

  
******

  
Saguru was completely unsurprised when, upon finally getting back home and to his room, he found that Yoru-chan had taken over - once again - his pillow.

  
(With such an unrepentant master as hers, there was no possible way that she would retain any concept of personal space whatsoever.)

  
  


**EPILOGUE**

  
Saguru hadn't exactly planned to arrive to class earlier than usual that morning, but, between the heist the day before and what came immediately after that, he ended up sleeping for barely five hours before his body seemingly decided that it was still too winded up to stay in bed any longer.

He was used to an inconsistent sleep pattern, so it didn't bother him that much.

No, what was keeping him from focusing on the news he had been trying to read for the last fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds, was the fact that he kept unconsciously sending glances at the door in wary anticipation.

He still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about last night.

At the time his own reactions had made completely sense to him, but now that he had at least some time to think, he wasn't sure what to make about the whole thing. Had KID been planning his...declaration...all along?

  
(More importantly, didn't KID admit to his own identity by saying that they would be seeing each other in the morning?)

  
When did it start exactly? Because the more Saguru thought about it, the more the weeks prior to the heist began to look extremely suspicious. At the time, he had dismissed it as the thief merely being his usual inscrutable self, but...

No, he needed to think about this more logically - in spite of the chaotic nature of the individual involved.

_ What do I know? _

KID had been acting outside of his usual parameters for the last six weeks.

_ What triggered the change? _

His notebooks. In the light of the previous night, it could only be them the cause of this sudden change in behavior.

No, that wasn't right. The transpassing technically happened before he found the notebooks, and that already was quite outside KID's normal MO. Why would a thief willingly enter the home of the detective who was trying to catch him?

_ What had happened before that? _

Saguru had been at school with Kuroba-kun, Aoko-san, and Keiko-san. It was their turn to clean-up the classroom, and the standard level of bickering between the two childhood friends was being held. He remembered the teen magician say...something, and then he...

Uh.

Did Saguru worry him?  _ Actually _ worried him?

  
(Kuroba-kun was the first to suggest he went home.)

  
_ What happened after the transpassing? _

For eighteen days nothing outside of the ordinary happened.

  
(Had KID been watching him in that time? Gathering information about him? That was what he had seemed to imply the night before.)

  
Then Saguru began to experience sporadic peculiar events, most of which he could reasonably assume were caused by the thief himself. He wasn't sure how he should classify the insistence of hanging out - it depended on whether he wanted to include Kuroba-kun's own brand of unusual behavior in the matter - but the attempts at feeding him were anything but subtle.

  
(That maddening and chaotic entity had gone to all the trouble to get him  _ sakuramochi _ at the end of September.)

  
As were the doves and the efforts to keep him away from his work.

  
(He had been trying to make him sleep more regularly, hadn't he?)

  
_ What next? _

The heist.

_ What happened at the heist? _

KID had...

_ What happened at the heist? _

KID had...

  
(The whole Task Force knew now. They didn't know about Saguru, but they knew about Akira-kun, and that was enough for the both of them.)

  
_ Why? _

KID said...

Last night KID said...

_ Why? _

Last night KID said...

_ Why? _

Did KID actually...

_ Why? _

Did KID actually say the truth?

  
( _"What I'm saying here, Tantei-san, is that I find you charming and lovely, and all that it took for me to notice was to actually _ look _ at you." _ )

  
It was at that sudden revelation that the classroom's door sharply opened, making Saguru's head snap up to lay his eyes on the cause of his current internal turmoil. Indigo eyes immediately latched on him, and the detective watched as his most troublesome classmate stalked across the room with the kind of purposeful stride that he must have learned from the two Nakamoris he hanged around on a daily basis.

He came to a stop in front of the detective's desk, both hands thumping against the smooth surface as the dark-haired boy leaned over it. He looked a bit frazzled, as if he had slept even less than Saguru did, eyes just a little bit feverish and locks of hair pointing everywhere, even more of a mess than they usually were.

"Hakuba!" it came out initially loud and steady, only for his voice to turn strangled at the end of the last syllable. His shoulders were so tensely held together that the blonde teen was surprised he couldn't see them shaking. It was somewhat reassuring to realize that Saguru wasn't the only one whose mental functions were being impaired by their current situation.

"Goodmorning, Kuroba-kun," he greeted in return, his conciliatory tone seemingly helping in calming some of his classmate's anxieties. One corner of the magician's lips twisted up in the ghost of an amused smile, before he began to speak again, voice still a bit unstable.

"Hakuba, listen...I...I've something I need to..." he interrupted himself, looking frustrated, and from the short distance separating them, Saguru clearly heard his next muttered words. "Shit, how do you do this with guys?"

Kuroba-kun was so nervous, he was having trouble coming up with what he wanted to say - Kuroba-kun of all people! - and it was so cute, that it made Saguru want to reach out, wrap him in his arms - close to his heart - and sink his face into soft dark hair.

Finally, after a few moments of struggle, the teen magician seemed to decide that action spoke louder than words: his indigo eyes locked once again with maroon ones, and his right hand raised in a closed fist until it was hovering between the two of them. Then, with a practiced twist of his wrist, a flower appeared, gently held between long skilled fingers.

"Hakuba, go on a date with me."

The flower in his hand, Saguru noticed, was a red-tipped white rose, with one single jagged leaf and a crooked petal on the same side. It was the same rose from the night before, and Kuroba-kun must have known before presenting it to him that he would have recognized it.

This was a  _ confession_.

It was a confession in more ways than one. Kuroba-kun was entrusting him with this knowledge - he was giving himself to him,  _ all of himself _ to him - and the mere thought of it made the teen detective's skin burn with humbleness and wonderment.

  
(Shameless, he was so shameless, what was Saguru supposed to do with all this? He had never been the object of such affection before.)

  
Raising his gaze from the flower, he met the thief magician's eyes to find that he was being stared back with apprehensive anticipation. Kuroba-kun was scared, he realized, noticing the way the other boy's breath had sped up at some point, and the way he looked just a little bit paler than usual.

No, that was wrong.

_ Kuroba-kun was downright terrified. _

Saguru opened his mouth with the intention to speak, to reassure him that there was no need for that - how could Saguru betray the other boy's trust after what he had done for him only half a dozen hours before? - but no words were coming to him, his throat was locked and clenched shut by too many different emotions boiling inside his chest and taking up all the space in his lungs.

So, instead, Saguru swallowed his words back down, he let his gaze be drawn by perfect indigo eyes, and he reached out to take the rose.

  
(The smile he received in return was as warm and blinding as the summer sun.

It was the most beautiful sight Saguru had ever seen in his life.)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings:  
> \- Panic attacks and anxiety  
> \- Signs of atypical depression and self-esteem issues  
> \- Several mentions of child emotional abuse


End file.
